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ARMA III has been released

ARMA III weekend deal just started on Steam. $35.99 instead of $59.99. Finally bought it now that its matured a bit, looking forward to flying some Heli's. The free ZEUS DLC looks pretty interesting as well.

Edit: Annnnnd pretty fun so far. Good amount of content in the Steam Workshop, the community is obviously very active. Grabbed Ground Attack and Ground Attack II since I dig flying, playing with the sandbox mode (editor) trying different Heli's, etc. So far its better than I thought it would be.
 
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Wait till you get into mods...that's where it gets really awesome. Some that I recommend:

CBA (base required for many mods)
Blastcore A3
JSRS 2.1
A3MP (lets you use the Arma 2/OA maps in A3)
Bad Benson's Land Texture Replacements
VTS Weapon Resting
FHQ M4 and Accessories packs
Mag Repack
ShackTac HUD

There's probably some more that I use but those are the main ones.

There is also a massive project called the CUP (Community Upgrade Project) that is working on converting all A2/OA assets over the ArmA 3, so once that gets done there should be a massive amount of content for ArmA 3.
 
Thanks for the recommendations Maverick I'll check those out. Suffice to say I'm officially a fan and wished I bought it long time ago. It takes a bit of adjustment, theres exploring at first learning the different weapons and vehicles but I thought the flying controls for example would be hella complicated like a flight simulator but thats not really the case - its not really more complicated than flying in BF3/BF4 except cockpit gauges actually work, and it things fly and drive at their real world speeds (example a Little Bird is capable of going 250km/h or so in real life. Same thing in the game).

Look forward to losing some time in this.
 
Yeah, originally the plan was to have the Take On Helicopters flight model for helis, but so far that hasn't been done, so it's a lot less complex than that.

If you really enjoy the game, you may even check out ArmA 2 and Operation Arrowhead. The controls are a bit clunkier but it's really not a huge deal once you get used to them, and there is a HUGE amount of mods, missions, third-party maps, etc. for those games. Really like more than 10 times the content that ArmA 3 currently has. Even the base game has more content in terms of vehicles, weapons, etc.
 
Or buy ArmA 2 and OA, then use the All in ArmA mod to have all the content added to ArmA 3 :)

As for the lack of content, it's really not THAT much, it's just that each rifle has like 20 configurations (thanks to not being able to select your scope, barrel, accessories). I really do miss the shotguns though.
 
Just discovered this Play withSix mod manager/updater for Arma II and III. Its similar to the Nexus Mod Manager for Bethesda concept, except for Bohemia Interactive games. I was slowly losing patience having to manually unzip mod files into game folders -- especially with some mods having multiple dependencies on other mods -- until I found this.

And the beauty of course is that it keeps them auto-updated. Unfortunately Steam Workshop only seems to go so far as far as what's available there. For example Bad Benson's mid texture replacement recommended by Maverick was nowhere to be found on Steam Workshop.

http://play.withsix.com/arma-3/
 
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Yeah sorry, that probably should have been the first thing I said about mods. :p
 
BOTA:49 said:
As for the lack of content, it's really not THAT much, it's just that each rifle has like 20 configurations (thanks to not being able to select your scope, barrel, accessories). I really do miss the shotguns though.
Click to expand...

Even considering that I am pretty sure A2 and OA have quite a bit more content (even just base A2). For example, most of the BLUFOR weapons in A3 are just variants of the same weapon. There are like two marksman rifles, two sniper rifles, and a handful of SMGs and pistols. No shotguns as you said, no bolt action weapons really. Many of the vehicles have cut-and-paste content from each other. ONE plane...I dunno. I like the game but there is definitely a lack of content in areas.
 
I liked the arsenal I had in ArmA 2 ACE. I also had some RH weapon packs and some other ones. Plenty of content. And the Soviet based T-series turrets would pop off when hit and fly into the air, as they should. :D

But I can't go back to ArmA 2 now, and I don't have room on my SSD for it.
 
MavericK96 said:
Even considering that I am pretty sure A2 and OA have quite a bit more content (even just base A2). For example, most of the BLUFOR weapons in A3 are just variants of the same weapon. There are like two marksman rifles, two sniper rifles, and a handful of SMGs and pistols. No shotguns as you said, no bolt action weapons really. Many of the vehicles have cut-and-paste content from each other. ONE plane...I dunno. I like the game but there is definitely a lack of content in areas.
Click to expand...

I have 1200 hours in a2, own a3 with my name in the credits and I think I have 30h or less in it.
The maps suck, hard, and like you said, the vehicles are cut and paste... The only jet is a port from Arma 2. Half the helicopters are a2 ports.
The weapons are shit... And my friends and I agree the current guns feel like a dlc add on.

Future or not, you can't have an Arma without armalites or AK variants.

Thing is, you can mod the shit out of the game, but Bis needs to have that solid content base. My team and I struggle to populate one of the previously top a2 servers and we know that 99% of the people won't mess around with mods for mp servers in most cases ..

I'm utterly Dissapointed in a3.
 
DPI said:
Just discovered this Play withSix mod manager/updater for Arma II and III. Its similar to the Nexus Mod Manager for Bethesda concept, except for Bohemia Interactive games. I was slowly losing patience having to manually unzip mod files into game folders -- especially with some mods having multiple dependencies on other mods -- until I found this.

And the beauty of course is that it keeps them auto-updated. Unfortunately Steam Workshop only seems to go so far as far as what's available there. For example Bad Benson's mid texture replacement recommended by Maverick was nowhere to be found on Steam Workshop.

http://play.withsix.com/arma-3/
Click to expand...

I use Arma3Sync alongside Six. It allows you to enable/disable mods before you launch Arma. We use Six to find which servers use which mods and just disable/enable them through Arma Sync. The mods can sometimes get tricky but Arma Sync makes it pretty manageable.
 
Re: previous two posts, it occurs to me it would be nice if the game had an option to auto download dependent mods upon attempting to join a server.

I had my first experience with a group on teamspeak last night in a "get off the island by any means" scenario, patrols everywhere and having to really sneak and choose confrontations carefully, looting bodies to get better guns - the whole thing was a blast and hands down more teamwork and coordination than ive experienced in other military themed games lately. And it never felt particularly "simmy" - something I'd dreaded irrationally and had put me off the series until now. Sure my FPS wasn't great but the enemies hit hard and dying is something you actually worried about and made it more tense.

I realize Arma II veterans probably got that type of experience out off their system in ArmaII and maybe the novelty has worn off and they were expecting yet another massive leap forward in Arma3 instead of what i saw one guy call "a texture mod for A2", but despite the flaws its fun and over one weekend's worth of gaming feel I already got my moneys worth compared to other titles that cost the same but weren't as fun or got boring quickly.

I will say Bohemia really is an enigma, all the stuff I read about how they need to optimize the engine but can't seem to do it. I wonder if all that DayZ money will allow them to throw some of it at engine optimization, among other highly requested improvements. The ZEUS dlc looks interesting but I see a lot of negative responses to it on places like reddit "why aren't you guys fixing the game first"
 
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Droc said:
I have 1200 hours in a2, own a3 with my name in the credits and I think I have 30h or less in it.
The maps suck, hard, and like you said, the vehicles are cut and paste... The only jet is a port from Arma 2. Half the helicopters are a2 ports.
The weapons are shit... And my friends and I agree the current guns feel like a dlc add on.

Future or not, you can't have an Arma without armalites or AK variants.

Thing is, you can mod the shit out of the game, but Bis needs to have that solid content base. My team and I struggle to populate one of the previously top a2 servers and we know that 99% of the people won't mess around with mods for mp servers in most cases ..

I'm utterly Dissapointed in a3.
Click to expand...

This is an issue with ArmA. Mods are good, and a few to improve the core are okay as those can become the standard. But ArmA needs many mods, and now it sorely needs content mods to. This fractures the community even more.

I hope there is an addon which improves the overall game but also adds in some real world weapons/factions with more units.
 
DPI said:
Re: previous two posts, it occurs to me it would be nice if the game had an option to auto download dependent mods upon attempting to join a server.
Click to expand...

They are supposedly working on integrating mod support into Steam Workshop, so maybe one day we will see that. With programs like Six, though, I'd personally rather them work on a lot of other stuff before that. What they need to do is integrate basic mod functionality (stuff like weapon resting, improved medical system, etc.) into the base game rather than just "letting the mod community take care of it" (which is basically a direct quote from one of the BIS devs...some of the stupidest shit I've ever heard come out of their mouths).

Regarding mods in general...I play ArmA 2 and 3 with a group of guys every Sunday, and previously Tuesdays and Thursdays when I was unemployed. The group is multinational, though most are over in Europe so it starts in the evening their time (starts 11 AM my time, hence why I can't play most days). We have a custom mod set that uses probably like 30 mods, the base being CWR2 and then a bunch more between weapon addons, maps, and other tweaks. We used to play ACE on Thursdays, but have started doing ArmA 3. There's been talk about what mods to start using with A3 and so far we have a few potentials, but there is just nowhere near the content as ArmA 2 so it's hard to get missions. Granted, ArmA 2 has had way more time for mod development and game development, as well as Operation Arrowhead and 3 DLC packs. But even if you compare base ArmA 2 content with ArmA 3, it's really just not even close. So mods have to fill in the gaps, and frankly they just aren't all there yet for ArmA 3.
 
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Agreed. Mods aren't just EZ, took me a while to figure out the whole process and I'm reasonably tech savvy - example none of the instructions I read said anything about actually having to enable the mod in game to make it show up, in the configure-expansions menu. Felt like an idiot once I realized but it's by no means idiot proof as it needs to be. Then there was the issue of some mods dont work in the user/documents/arma3 folder, and only work in the Arma3 folder in steamapps, so I just moved them all to the steamapps folder. Took me hours to get it all squared away and unfortunately mostly because I hadn't discovered withSix until later.

They can't rely on anything being "taken care of by the community" because it will only ever be a small subset that actually run mods. Some of the functionality added by mods are such no-brainer "I can't believe this isn't already in the game" you wonder WTF is the major malfunction in getting it integrated natively when most or all of the work is already done for them.. They should even make that a requirement for mod development "your work might be sucked into the main codebase without notice".
 
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Yeah, I agree. They need to start working closer with mod developers to get some of the basic functionality mods in the base game. They have worked with mod devs in the past, but they really need to bring in more of that content.

As for running mods, I would recommend using a launcher (like Six or a third-party one...I use this for ArmA 3) rather than enabling/disabling in-game. The reason being, and I'm not sure if they have changed/fixed this since I haven't tried it in awhile, that if you have a mod enabled in game, it will enable it every time you start the game. Which is what you may want, but if you then delete that mod without disabling it in-game, the game will crash on load and you'll have to go edit some file to get it working again. Like I said, not sure if they ever fixed that but back when they first added that in-game mod menu in ArmA 2 (quite a while back I admit) I tried it and had problems with removed mods trying to load in game and causing errors/crashes.
 
Flogger23m said:
This is an issue with ArmA. Mods are good, and a few to improve the core are okay as those can become the standard. But ArmA needs many mods, and now it sorely needs content mods to. This fractures the community even more.

I hope there is an addon which improves the overall game but also adds in some real world weapons/factions with more units.
Click to expand...

Since you bring up factions, on a somewhat related I'm getting a kick out of these guys (Middle East Irregulars). I don't know much about editing, beyond dropping a bunch of them on an empty map and clearing them out, so for example if I wanted to edit an existing mission and convert all the enemy units types to Middle East Irregulars, and have their trucks running patrols on roads, or perhaps even play as this faction, wouldn't know how to do so in the editor. I'm sure I'll get there.

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?167781-Middle-East-Irregulars
7CWSQiX.jpg
 
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MavericK96 said:
Even considering that I am pretty sure A2 and OA have quite a bit more content (even just base A2). For example, most of the BLUFOR weapons in A3 are just variants of the same weapon. There are like two marksman rifles, two sniper rifles, and a handful of SMGs and pistols. No shotguns as you said, no bolt action weapons really. Many of the vehicles have cut-and-paste content from each other. ONE plane...I dunno. I like the game but there is definitely a lack of content in areas.
Click to expand...

A2 and OA are 2 games, hardly a fair comparison. Comparing A2 to A3 is much more reasonable. Not to mention the fact that hardly any of the weapons were used, outside of AK-74 variants and M16A4s. I don't know anyone who actually used the G36 series or M8's for anything other than testing them out initially. Same goes with tracks and wheels. Hell, even helicopters. Yes, there was more content in A2, but a lot of it was pure crap and hardly useable. In A3, I can't think of a single vehicle or weapon that's without purpose.

There's only 3 things I really miss from A2 personally - jets (nothing can replace the A10 in my heart), M4s, and AKs. I don't care that they're old as dirt in this time frame, bring those back and I'd be golden.
 
BOTA:49 said:
A2 and OA are 2 games, hardly a fair comparison. Comparing A2 to A3 is much more reasonable. Not to mention the fact that hardly any of the weapons were used, outside of AK-74 variants and M16A4s. I don't know anyone who actually used the G36 series or M8's for anything other than testing them out initially. Same goes with tracks and wheels. Hell, even helicopters. Yes, there was more content in A2, but a lot of it was pure crap and hardly useable. In A3, I can't think of a single vehicle or weapon that's without purpose.

There's only 3 things I really miss from A2 personally - jets (nothing can replace the A10 in my heart), M4s, and AKs. I don't care that they're old as dirt in this time frame, bring those back and I'd be golden.
Click to expand...

Yeah the lack of fixed wing aircraft in the base game is still a little surprising for how long the game's been out. They're putting out out FreeLC like ZEUS, thats great, but they can't be bothered to slap a few jets in? I wonder if part of this game's problem is the identity crisis created by Bohemia setting it in the future: not far enough in the future for truly "futuristic weapons" and mechs and whatnot, but far enough away from present day that all these weird made-up weapons and vehicles are supposed to exist, rendering everyone's favorite contemporary weapons "obsolete" according to this lore.

Anyhoo, ended up installing a few jets via mods in meantime: F/A-18, SU-39 Frogfoot, SU-35 Flanker, Civilian Jets Mod (Boeing 747, 737, a few others). I'm normally a helicopter guy but the Flanker was surprisingly fun and agile to fly. Placed ten or fifteen 747's on the Stratis airfield with AI pilots, they all proceeded to take off one by one and start flying around the map, I jumped in a Flanker and hunted them all down. Good fun.
 
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BOTA:49 said:
A2 and OA are 2 games, hardly a fair comparison. Comparing A2 to A3 is much more reasonable. Not to mention the fact that hardly any of the weapons were used, outside of AK-74 variants and M16A4s. I don't know anyone who actually used the G36 series or M8's for anything other than testing them out initially. Same goes with tracks and wheels. Hell, even helicopters. Yes, there was more content in A2, but a lot of it was pure crap and hardly useable. In A3, I can't think of a single vehicle or weapon that's without purpose.
Click to expand...

Guess we have had different experiences, because I have a used nearly all of the A2 weapons at some point or another. Really just depends on what missions you play and what loadouts you are able to use.

Yes, I know A2 with OA is not a fair comparison, but I did say even just base A2 had more content. Plus, OA is kind of a half-game, really...it's a standalone expansion for A2, but it is still an expansion.

I think the content in A3 is pretty good, for what little there is. There are just large holes in what you would expect...shotguns were brought up (and they are even shown in the Tactical Guide still, yet there has been no mention of them being added since), the fact that there is only one jet is just silly...supposedly 2 more or coming, but who know when. What it comes down to is that the "final" version of ArmA 3 was content-incomplete. Hell, the campaign wasn't even there at all...they are still adding it. A2 had a lot of bugs at release, for sure, but so does ArmA 3. The fact that it has some of the same bugs that are from A2 (and even from A1 and OFP, for some), is really infuriating.
 
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Apparently we did. I still think OA counts as a fairly solid game in it's own right. Hell, once it came out you didn't see nearly as many missions using Chernarus as you did Takistan. Public servers saw more people with SCARs than M16s. That sort of thing.

I do agree the "final" version of A3 is lacking and should have been held off for a bit. I don't care as much about the campaign (although for the first time since OFP the campaign is actually playable....and good!) but the fact they left out a lot of the stuff they showed off previously is rather disturbing. Those jets should have been in the game from the get-go. Same with shotguns (after all the work getting pellets to work properly in A2/OA, you'd THINK they'd have it here!). While it's far less buggy than A2 and A1 were on release, it's still irritating. We STILL can't interrupt animations in an emergency, or create missions without worrying about some game breaking bug in the next patch, or <insert bug here>. Really, it's unfortunate there's no real competitor to this game. I love the gameplay, I love the idea behind it, I love the customization you can do with pretty much everything, but if there was any competition worth a damn I'd probably have jumped ship long ago unfortunately.
 
Ryoohki360 said:
Im playing a ton of breaking point and having a blast with my friends!
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Really? Every time I suggest breaking point to my Arma buds, I get "why dont we just play DayZ".

Fact is I like Arma3 better from the engine standpoint. The earlier engines and textures and everything are just an eyesore by comparison.
 
I play SaMatra wasteland whenever I have time. Its about the only thing I play anymore. Tons of fun. Its just hard to get consistent groups who actually do stuff.
 
Or play with shit loads of good gear just to have ARMA freeze... happened twice last night. Thankfully there was one space available and my group mate picked up all my money and gave it back. But then it happened again... !!!!! ARMA... lol
 
DPI said:
Really? Every time I suggest breaking point to my Arma buds, I get "why dont we just play DayZ".

Fact is I like Arma3 better from the engine standpoint. The earlier engines and textures and everything are just an eyesore by comparison.
Click to expand...

DayZ map is small and the gun play and gameplay is way inferior. The game run splendid in 1440p at almost maxed out setting on my rig, while DayZ chug like a mofo

Plus it's 2 new maps.. I play the standalone DayZ is this game
 
They added the third and final part of the campaign recently, and added two new fixed-wing aircraft as well (not sure if they are on the stable branch yet or just dev). At least progress is being made...campaign is nice but what I really want to know is what they are going to focus on next. I severely hope that they are going to start adding in mod functionality to the base game...stuff like weapon resting/functional bipods, a proper medical system, etc.
 
My clan members all hope they implement DX12 into the game by next year. It would really help the game's engine to run a lot more smoothly.
 
I'm not sure a DX change will affect much, but who knows...progress is generally always good.
 
MavericK96 said:
I'm not sure a DX change will affect much, but who knows...progress is generally always good.
Click to expand...

This. I think the main issue is the game still does not use multi core properly.

I believe I just finished the campaign. There are apparently more side objectives within the final mission, but with my ending I got essentially zero closure or explanation of the story. I was not expecting much, by my ending was downright terrible. :p

Will replay it to find all optional objectives. BTW, Win is perhaps the shortest of the campaign parts.
 
MavericK96 said:
I'm not sure a DX change will affect much, but who knows...progress is generally always good.
Click to expand...

Well when explosions happen like in this video, my PC chokes on it sometimes. The game doesn't use all of my cores so it has mixed performance depending on the situation. DX12 because it is supposed to be highly threaded and similar to Mantle, but for all GPUs, would help ARMA III performance tremendously. Yes, I agree that progress is generally good. ;)
 
cageymaru said:
My clan members all hope they implement DX12 into the game by next year. It would really help the game's engine to run a lot more smoothly.
Click to expand...

Heh. The power of marketing. DX12 is stopgap announcement vapor because MS was feeling left out, as the blogosphere interest and curiosity pendulum swings slowly toward OpenGL, SteamOS and Mantle. I'm sure it will eventually be something in nearly two years from now, and in Microsoft's stuck-in-1990's shortsightedness they will put it behind the windows upgrade paywall again (meaning Windows 9.0+ only and developers will ignore it in favor of DX11 because installed base isn't there), but it is not an answer or argument that addresses Bohemia's longrunning inability to optimize their engine in any game they've ever made.
 
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It is not necessarily their inability to optimize their engines, since they have never tried. Arma 3 is using the exact same engine as Arma 2 except with minor upgrades - only the game itself was significantly upgraded. I have never seen Arma 1 or older, so I cannot comment with certainty there, but I would not be surprised if there was only a minor engine upgrade between 1 and 2.

If Arma 3 was actually a new engine (optimized or unoptimized), it would be heavily multi-threaded, capable of fully utilizing all four cores of a quad-core CPU, heavily scalable with multiple GPUs, and have full 64-bit support with high memory scalability. It does not have any of those things.

BI keeps releasing all this garbage and people are paying full-price for it, so since they do not have any competition or consumer pressure, they keep re-releasing the same garbage. I will probably never buy DayZ standalone at any price since it is not much different than DayZ mods (if i ever play those again), and I am certainly not buying Arma 3 until it is both $30 or less and has a better developed Wasteland (which is a problem due to the massive content shortage and Bohemia not providing adequate modding support to fix that).
 
MavericK96 said:
They added the third and final part of the campaign recently, and added two new fixed-wing aircraft as well (not sure if they are on the stable branch yet or just dev). At least progress is being made...campaign is nice but what I really want to know is what they are going to focus on next. I severely hope that they are going to start adding in mod functionality to the base game...stuff like weapon resting/functional bipods, a proper medical system, etc.
Click to expand...

There's definitely something to be said about them integrating some of the more obvious and no-brainer mods into the core game, I mean 99% of the work is already done. There are some AI mods for example that are just awesome. But besides obvious things like engine optimization, I'd like to see them get rid of the antiquated GameSpy server browser and move toward something a little more structured and user friendly. Really the whole multiplayer system needs some kind of overhaul, and maybe that's something they won't even try to fix until Arma4.

I really enjoy Arma3 but its simply not accessible to my average gamer friends, because its really more of half game and half SDK. It's like "here's this highlevel game engine and environment, make your own game" - like a garry's mod of military-sim-shooter. That approach is a modder's paradise and certainly resonates with many people, but not average players. There shouldn't be as much "what do I do now" main menu confusion for newcomers as there exists now. And because of the overnight success of DayZ selling a ton of copies of the standalone, which certainly went far beyond the expectations of BI's CEO, I get the sinking feeling their office will be dedicated to that.

I'd love to be wrong on all these points. Still love the game.
 
im waiting on a deal somewhere to grab this game , should have bought it in alpha.

silly me
 
DPI said:
There's definitely something to be said about them integrating some of the more obvious and no-brainer mods into the core game, I mean 99% of the work is already done. There are some AI mods for example that are just awesome. But besides obvious things like engine optimization, I'd like to see them get rid of the antiquated GameSpy server browser and move toward something a little more structured and user friendly. Really the whole multiplayer system needs some kind of overhaul, and maybe that's something they won't even try to fix until Arma4.

I really enjoy Arma3 but its simply not accessible to my average gamer friends, because its really more of half game and half SDK. It's like "here's this highlevel game engine and environment, make your own game" - like a garry's mod of military-sim-shooter. That approach is a modder's paradise and certainly resonates with many people, but not average players. There shouldn't be as much "what do I do now" main menu confusion for newcomers as there exists now. And because of the overnight success of DayZ selling a ton of copies of the standalone, which certainly went far beyond the expectations of BI's CEO, I get the sinking feeling their office will be dedicated to that.

I'd love to be wrong on all these points. Still love the game.
Click to expand...

Yes and no. Yes because it is moddable, and no because there are still some very apparent limitations on the mods.

That being said, there is a mod which allows moving while pulling out a sidearm. Why BIS did not make this function by default is beyond me. :confused: Something so simple that you would simply expect in any shooter, yet it is still not in the ArmA series by default.

The game certainly can be more optimized if they spent more time working on the engine, or made an entirely new one.
 
cageymaru said:
Well when explosions happen like in this video, my PC chokes on it sometimes. The game doesn't use all of my cores so it has mixed performance depending on the situation. DX12 because it is supposed to be highly threaded and similar to Mantle, but for all GPUs, would help ARMA III performance tremendously. Yes, I agree that progress is generally good. ;)
Click to expand...

I think the biggest issue is that BiS is a simulator company, iirc. I don't think they know how to optimize. With a simulator, you can throw the best hardware at it and be done. That doesn't work for gaming, because of the wide array of systems.

I think this is the original engine with slight tweaks. It needs a rewrite bad. There's so much that they hack together to make do that it has obvious side effects. This engine wasn't designed for a lot of what they're doing.
 
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