ARMA III has been released

40% off right now on Steam, and free to download and play all weekend. Arma III is a great game, got a major patch recently and they also announced plans for future content so development is ongoing.
 
Yeah, I'd encourage everyone to at least try it out for the free weekend.
 
Gave it a shot this morning, played for like 1 hour before going to work, only finished 3 campaign missions so far but i really liked it

It runs pretty good on my pc ( 6GB - i3 4130 - gtx 480 stock clocked ) I was getting around 40-70fps with any kind of "post process" crap disabled @ 1680 * 1050 medium detail 2x AA with object and view draw distance set between 600-1000m

Multiplayer is said to be much more resource intensive, maybe i'll give it a shot in 9 hours from now. controls / accessibility wise it MUCH improved when compared to the previous arma games, mouse input feels nice and smooth and the controls are not that hard to be adjusted to your personal preferences, used this layout as a baseline

-> http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=131026100 <-

It's still too early to tell but this is definately a worthy and much-needed sequel, can't wait to try altis life workshop and other stuff !
 
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if your playing mp i would recommend at least 2km view distance preferably 3km

also that image is way too big
 
Absolutely loved Arma II wasteland - one of my favorite game/mod combos ever. Tried wasteland during the free weekend for Arma III. Horrible.

Hardly any content, uninteresting maps, still as glitchy as ever, even more terrible performance than Arma 2. I consistently get 60+ FPS with almost all graphics at minimum (but max view distance) on Arma 2 wasteland. With Arma 3 I get 45 FPS on Sa-Matra servers, default (non-max) view distance, with EVERYTHING disabled/minimum (even turning off a couple of things I leave on in Arma 2)...standing completely still with no one / nothing else around.
 
shifty68 said:
if your playing mp i would recommend at least 2km view distance preferably 3km

also that image is way too big
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noted ! what about object and shadow distance ??


GearChoices said:
With Arma 3 I get 45 FPS on Sa-Matra servers, default (non-max) view distance, with EVERYTHING disabled/minimum (even turning off a couple of things I leave on in Arma 2)...standing completely still with no one / nothing else around.
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probably a bad server, lag can affect FPS in this game you know ! played 1 round of TDM last night just get a feel for it, I was mostly between 45-60fps, perfectly playable but i think i'll buy this game later when i upgrade to some more beefy PC parts like 4670/4690k and R9 290,it looks pretty optimized so far ! I remember arma 2 SP campaign running like crap on a 4.5ghz sandybridge + GTX 660 @ low/medium settings :(
 
i5-2500k, 8gb ram, win 7 64-bit, 6950 w/2gb vram. I know that is starting to get old...but I am not exactly rushing to buy new parts to play a game that is still as buggy as the last, has less interesting maps, and has far less content.

The reason I mentioned sa-matra was because the sa-matra servers have the most optimized wasteland code. I tried a non-sa-matra wasteland server, and was stuck at 20 FPS while standing still and nothing around.

Anyway, not trying to completely bash the game. I just came in with low expectations and was kind of shocked that it did not even meet the expectations I did have lol.
 
I somewhat fail to see how Altis is less interesting than Chernarus. I guess if you like framerate-destroying forests then Cherno is better, but Altis has way more enterable buildings and (IMO) more gorgeous terrain rather than just forest fights (which the AI almost always win).
 
Altis may be big, but it's boring as all hell. Altis has very little forested areas and again, 280kmsq and no lakes, rivers, or streams.
The lack of forests in Altis makes such a big map have a fraction of the choke points that the a2 maps did.
Charnarus was a much better map. I have 1200 hours playing Wasteland on Charnarus and I can say it's a far superior map for mp play.

I have posted many times and I keep up that a3 is still seriously lacking. Heck, since beta, bhi has fucked off. Look at all the vehicles since alpha, none have interiors. Lazy

I still say wait
 
Honestly think Charnarus was the worst map out of all the arma's. Sahrani was the best easily.

Wasteland sucks ass.
 
yourgrandma said:
Honestly think Charnarus was the worst map out of all the arma's. Sahrani was the best easily.

Wasteland sucks ass.
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A3 Wasteland is terrible.

I liked it for a2. I played lots on the original tonic Wasteland, everything else was a rip off from it.
SaMatra Wasteland was good, and Cqc Wasteland was amazing.
Both of those died off, and the reaming is s&s and tcf Wasteland, both are fucking retarded .
 
Droc said:
A3 Wasteland is terrible.

I liked it for a2. I played lots on the original tonic Wasteland, everything else was a rip off from it.
SaMatra Wasteland was good, and Cqc Wasteland was amazing.
Both of those died off, and the reaming is s&s and tcf Wasteland, both are fucking retarded .
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Yeah...after the A2 US sa-matra servers died off in popularity upon the release of A3 (have no idea why the vast majority of their population immediately moved to A3 wasteland, especially since it was way worse back then), I gradually lost all interest in A2 wasteland.

Way too much loot / spawns - get's boring fast. I really liked the post-reset rush for supplies/base parts and hunkering down in a high-activity area while recruiting a group of independents to defend the base. In the current A2 servers, there are mega-bases everywhere, none of the independents ever want to work together, supplies/weapons everywhere (making whatever you get meaningless), and enough explosives and heavy weapons to wipe out an entire town, making it pointless to try to defend anything.

And that is just the "normal wasteland" servers. The "wasteland war" servers or whatever they call them now....you walk down the street and there is a row of tanks to your left, b-52 bombers to your right, and a mobile nuclear missile launcher at the end. You have to get in one and take off before the bombs and missiles coming at you from all directions get you :)

It's really sad :(
 
The problem was samatra dropped all support as soon as the a3 alpha came out.
Lots of Wastelands are easily tweak able, but samatra is a bit of a dick and retains total control of his mission file. My team, c4g ran the US servers and I was an admin. I ran a pole asking for some final features to be added before he completely ignored the a2 mission, stuff like basic character, item and weapon saving over restarts. Pole was unanimous but our senior leadership refused to even suggest it tosamatra bbecause they were scared he would get mad and refuse to allow us to hosthis a3 servers.

After those servers died, myself and my rregulars went on to run the Cqc wWasteland servers. Similar to samatra, but with saving and more mission. Still extremely hard, no thermals etc.
But back in January our lead coder ended up in hospital and the lead server admin waited 6 weeks to fix a major battle eye error and by that time the population was gone.

I tried that s&s mess, but even the tactical was a shit show with urber guns and tanks everywhere.
Now tcf seems the goto server in a2, but again, super guns at every turn.

I am still affiliate with c4g and our a3 servers are some of the top servers, but it's broken as fuck and samatra spends more time working on his king of the Hill or other mods. He refuses to allow anyone else access to his mission file.
 
And from what I understand, ALL the other wasteland mission files are nowhere near as optimized? Making it a choice between a feature-starved, snail-developed, half-broken version (sa-matra) or an un-optimized, over-spawning, lag-fest.

Sa-matra still has not put up a Chernarus wasteland despite the topic coming up with strong support multiple times over several months, and other servers already having successfully done it.

I used to play on S&S for a while as a last-resort, but eventually couldn't take it anymore. I tried CQC some, but I still could not get into it (can't remember why). C4G's US #8 server was the one I loved and played on for the longest. Before that I played on one of the Battleguns (i think it was called that) servers, before they ruined their own with various Wasteland War versions on all of them.

With or without Wasteland, Arma 3 just is not anywhere near worth it for me at $35+. If I had a top-end computer right now (the only thing that can play it even remotely decently it appears) and A3 was $20 or less, MAYBE. Seriously, the killer-pebbles is worse in A3 than A2. Twice I ran into a tiny pebble even smaller than the ones in A2, and my vehicle instantly turned into a fireball both times. Died three times trying to walk up sentient killer-stairs in two different buildings.

And yet Bohemia still poured all that time/money into single-player...
 
GearChoices said:
Seriously, the killer-pebbles is worse in A3 than A2. Twice I ran into a tiny pebble even smaller than the ones in A2, and my vehicle instantly turned into a fireball both times. Died three times trying to walk up sentient killer-stairs in two different buildings.
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Weird, I have never once had those issues in ArmA 3...due to using PhysX instead of whatever wonky bullshit they used in A2, I am guessing.

In fact I often drive right over sharp rocks and all it does is make the suspension shoot up a bit...never took any damage from a small rock though.

I do agree with performance though, they really need to fix that shit. I understand it might suck on a crappily-optimized mission like Wasteland, but even in some really basic missions I get huge drops if there is any more than like 50 or so AI on the map. Unacceptable for a large-scale war sim like this.
 
MavericK96 said:
Weird, I have never once had those issues in ArmA 3...due to using PhysX instead of whatever wonky bullshit they used in A2, I am guessing.

In fact I often drive right over sharp rocks and all it does is make the suspension shoot up a bit...never took any damage from a small rock though.
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I don't know - I figured it was pebbles but maybe it was something else. I would be driving along and then suddenly explode (with 100% vehicle health right before exploding). Once near a road and once out in the middle of nowhere. No "killed by" message (just the default "X was killed"), no visible projectiles, no sounds before the explosion.

But the killer-stairs were definitely real lol. Was in a group with two others watching one of those times, and they had no idea why I was dying as I walked up the stairs (they were walking up/down them fine).
 
Yeah, the stairs thing used to happen to me all the time in ArmA 2, but I haven't experienced that yet in A3.

As for the rocks, even if you did hit a rock going really fast I doubt a vehicle would actually explode instantly. Might have been something else going on there. Not ruling out bugs entirely but I play A3 pretty regularly and I've never seen that happen.
 
Does this game still have problems with AMD FX chips?

The only game really I head that had complaints in the past...
 
Hey if your into coop missions for arma 3 check out my buddy's mission set, they are pretty kick ass. they are designed for around 3-10 players though can be played with less, but it would be pretty hard. using the acre mod with them is hella fun. and yes I am shamelessly promoting his mission set for the make arma not war competition. but seriously they are crazy fun.

http://makearmanotwar.com/entry/PlSBZWOnTH#.U4JXyfnIbCk
 
Droc said:
After those servers died, myself and my rregulars went on to run the Cqc wWasteland servers. Similar to samatra, but with saving and more mission. Still extremely hard, no thermals etc.
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How are those server populations now? SaMatra is currently about the only thing my computer ever sees anymore and wouldn't mind trying something else out.

MavericK96 said:
As for the rocks, even if you did hit a rock going really fast I doubt a vehicle would actually explode instantly. Might have been something else going on there. Not ruling out bugs entirely but I play A3 pretty regularly and I've never seen that happen.
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Seriously, you've never seen this? If you're on an ATV and youre running fast enough to hit something and have more than one component go red it blows faster than you can get away from it and kills you. Every single time! And if you manage to only make one piece red it will still drive but then 1 minute later it blows up while you're driving it. Its so annoying. The SUV is just about as bad. That thing is fast as fuck but its a glass speed demon. Breaks on some seriously minor hits.
 
Never seen one instasplode but i have see them blow 1 sec after a crash, loads of times.
 
I've seen it a million times in ArmA 2 but never in ArmA 3. I guess it just hasn't come up in a mission yet...I dunno. All I know is that the physics in A3 are vastly superior to A2.

I'll have to go into the editor and do some test runs with the ATV I guess.
 
Any civi car will explode if you ram it into something at a decent speed, basically if i bump into something and the engine goes red i start screaming " GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT!"
 
cageymaru said:
Buddies playing ARMA III. Random person crashes into a police car and the vehicle flips into the air. Then it lands on my buddy's head. :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CUZyTTlftU
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Ugh, was that your buddy laughing? So....grating. Funny what happened though.

I may have to give Altis life a shot here. I haven't touched the game since release unfortunately. I remember hopping on a Wasteland server and being totally lost.
 
Flogger23m said:
I'm sure it will be as awesome, fully fleshed out and detailed as Take On Helicopters, Carrier Command, and Take on Mars.

Oh wait...

The series is more or less a 3rd rate sand box title now with no particular part being exceptional.
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As opposed to what, Arma 2, Arma, or OFP?
 
Flogger23m said:
I'm sure it will be as awesome, fully fleshed out and detailed as Take On Helicopters, Carrier Command, and Take on Mars.

Oh wait...

The series is more or less a 3rd rate sand box title now with no particular part being exceptional.
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It's just so meh...it tries to do a little of everything in a mediocre way and nothing really special. Just way too many keyboard commands for anything to want to try...you have to have the entire keyboard memorized and that's just stupid. As bad as Battlefield has been over the past few years, I know I can always jump into a game and only need to know a few keys to do what I need to do and have an enjoyable experience.
 
TheMadHatterXxX said:
It's just so meh...it tries to do a little of everything in a mediocre way and nothing really special. Just way too many keyboard commands for anything to want to try...you have to have the entire keyboard memorized and that's just stupid. As bad as Battlefield has been over the past few years, I know I can always jump into a game and only need to know a few keys to do what I need to do and have an enjoyable experience.
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ArmA 3 did being more changes over than ArmA 1 to 2 did, but it still isn't enough. Many things just don't work well enough as you mentioned. The experience across the board isn't very good due to the lack of direction or emphasis.

I did finish the campaign, but after having turrets simply not work (no option to take control) 3 out of 4 times I attempted a mission I gave up. Simple things like interacting with objects is such a pain.
 
TheMadHatterXxX said:
It's just so meh...it tries to do a little of everything in a mediocre way and nothing really special. Just way too many keyboard commands for anything to want to try...you have to have the entire keyboard memorized and that's just stupid. As bad as Battlefield has been over the past few years, I know I can always jump into a game and only need to know a few keys to do what I need to do and have an enjoyable experience.
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Not sure what you mean there. I have ~500 hours in ARMA 3 and 200 hours in BF3 (I know... not a ton and didnt feel compelled to buy bf4) and don't see where you're coming from in needed to know so many more keybinds. Unless youre commanding. But for regular FPS play the control scheme is maybe only slightly different

Anyway, I think maybe the meh feeling you get and many get has a lot to do with the absolute blandness of the maps and the emptiness of the campaign. Stratis sucks. Its tiny and the terrain is garbage. Altis is so big that even in a helicopter it takes a long time to get across. And while it is much more interesting its so fucking huge you can't enjoy it unless there are 400 people on the map. I play SaMatra exclusively and only on Stratis because 70 people on Stratis is quite a bit and is pretty dangerous, but 70 people on Altis is a ghost town.

Flashpoint was so good and the campaign was so great, I played through the it a dozen times. But the campaign in ARMA3 is so hollow and shitty that its kind of ridiculous. Also the music in Flashpoint was good. Is there music in the campaign? I have no idea and if so, that's how little impact it had on me playing though.

Pluses: it sounds better, plays so much better, and has a pretty decent inventory system.

I suggest playing on a SaMatra server. US#6 is where I play almost always but its usually full. The other Stratis US servers usually have a few vacancies. SaMatra has base building, respawning cars all over, money system, gun stores, missions, every character can repair and refuel vehicles... I really like it.

Bad day playing yesterday though. I have been playing opfor for the past few months and last night the teams were more unbalanced than I've ever seen
Blue: 10
Op: ~40
Ind: ~25

I usually fly and we had all the helos, 2 bases around the main town on Stratis and it was just boring. The big helos can complete 2 mission types without having to land or have any support at all so I would just go get every armored vehicle and every ammo truck that would pop up with my helicopter and bring it back. We had 2 pawnee attack choppers, one orca attack chopper, one unarmed orca, a littlebird and a mohawk. We had a ghosthawk too but the pilot crashed it shortly after taking it off... like a dumb ass lol. It was so boring. I finally pick up a truck with my helo and tried to smack a guy with it and crashed lol and just said fuck it, I'm going to bed.

Normally when the teams are more balanced its great. There are 3 gun stores and usually each faction claims one and the rest send teams in to assault each one. Base defenses are hectic because the snipers can be a lot of different places with a lot of different firepower. Its great! But as I said I'm usually flying so I dont participate too much in defense unless its gunning down attackers or sending rockets into the enemies gun stores :) or running missions paradropping 4-8 guys on objectives
 
This fan trailer is pretty epic. Love that whine of the A10 Warthog's 30mm. Been putting some hours into this game past few weeks, single player mods like Pilgrimage, and multi-player (Invade and Annex - my personal favorite co-op mode) , and I'm always in awe of this game every time I stop in for another session. Nothing else does SCALE quite like Arma III.

ArmA III Trailer [2160p]: http://youtu.be/kwxFrvE0bI4
 
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There's a &#8364;500,000 Arma III content creation contest going on called http://MakeArmaNotWar.com

Why this is interesting is because if you look at the finalists in each category, it's a pretty good guide for what are already some of the best mods from the game - a quick glance at some of the best stuff without having to sift through people's personal favorites lists on Reddit or elsewhere.
 
caddys83 said:
Anyone play Arma 3 Life mod?
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I've tried it out a bunch of times but it always just seemed like junior high in terms of the interactions and the mentality of the people playing. Its definitely popular, since there are tons of A3L servers. Its also the mod that 90% of the Arma III twitch streamers seem to play as well; with probably the biggest one being "Lirik" who gets 43,000 teenagers watching him play it, and it always seems to end up as a situation with 20-30 people standing around in the street arguing with cops because someone ran someone else over.

There are a few youtube personalities that make amusing videos with it; like THIS ONE where FrankieOnPC breaks into a prison, takes the guards hostage, extorts a million dollars and then gets away in a Heli. It has its moments for sure. Part of this mod's comedic appeal is because of how seriously the people role playing as "cops" take it.

A3L is an oddity, I don't understand the popularity, and I've just chalked it up to being a generational thing where you've gotta be in the 15-25 age range to appreciate it and think its hilarious enough to put a lot of hours in. I ultimately like all the military mods and modes a lot better but I realize I'm probably in the minority.
 
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DPI said:
I
A3L is an oddity, I don't understand the popularity, and I've just chalked it up to being a generational thing where you've gotta be in the 15-25 age range to appreciate it and think its hilarious enough to put a lot of hours in. I ultimately like all the military mods and modes a lot better but I realize I'm probably in the minority.
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Do not own A3 here yet. Need a new computer and still waiting for them to add a better alternative main map. But anyway, I would not mind an "alternative" style mod like A3L, but my problem with it is its focus on following a huge bunch of rules. For me, if a game/mod requires players to actively go out of their way to play in a certain pre-defined way, it is already fundamentally flawed and likely not going to be fun at all for me. Any "rules" should be designed/programmed/scripted directly into the game, unless it is merely rules about abusive behavior, bugs/glitches, etc... If they cannot do that, then the design of the system is flawed in that it is trying to implement something too forcefully/artificially, which results in stale gameplay. And A3L, from what I have watched of it, seems to be exactly that. As you said, the big "peaks" of A3L seem to be a group of people arguing on the street (because nothing else CAN really happen, or at least it is extremely difficult for anything else to happen...it's all pretend).
 
The reason for the strict rules in A3L is because without them it's just troll simulator - everyone would just kill everyone else on sight, it would be a TDM cluster of being shot or run over constantly and people would lose interest. So the rules are there to shape the flow of the game more so than they're arbitrary things imposed by some power tripping server owner. And what seems to keep people engaged and create tension is walking right up to the edge of those rules and seeing how far they want to step over the line and cross them on that particular day.

And all that isn't to say that the whole thing isn't completely bizarre to watch or play. Just chaos and confusion and a lot of smart-assery, briefly punctuated by the occasional witty player with some funny line in proximity voip (like in the video I linked a few posts ago, Franklie asks one of the inmates "What are you in for" and the guy without missing a beat responds "The state looks down on sodomy.")
 
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