Armed Assault Community?

[cain2001]

I dont know if anyone of you remeber the "hype" when OFP was about to get released. I remember visiting this community website everyday for like 3 weeks untill i got the game. Now a few months before ArAs is getting realesed i realised that theres no "main" community website where teams/people can discuss and make plans for the realease of ArAs.

I know we have AA General forum here but its not enough. I think we need to take "better care" or there might be a good chance skilled addon and missionmakers will choose another game instead of this. http://www.armedassault.com/ Dosnt give me the feeling "Hey, come and check this game out". It dosnt show the art of work I seen made by dedicated OFP players. The greatness about this game hasnt been shown.

This is just how I feel about the upcomming ArAs, I would love to see a bigger community with more dedicated memebers. Since many people who bought OFP left it before the best part begun i feel that its time to make sure that very same misstake wont happen again!


Maybe im blind and cant see the communities buidling up (maybe bis have huge plans http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/wink_o.gif ), but the only active forum ive seen is this one and its pretty slow for being the main forum to the best game ever!

OFPs very first official website: http://www.codemasters.com/redirec....eng.htm (http://www.codemasters.com/redirect/redirect.php?url=/flashpoint/front-eng.htm)


Dedicated Clans sign up List before the release of OFP: http://www.codemasters.com/flashpoint/civilian/clans/showclans.php

Please post your thoughts!

//Cain

[tankieboy]

Not knowing what can be done ingame, how can a community build up as of yet?

[Fork122]

It also is hard to show off your game without a publisher.  Usually the publisher runs the PR stuff, for example EA shows off Battlefield 2 at E3, not Dice.

[[IT|Q]]

hi Cain - my thoughts are similar  http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/huh.gif

my post (about BIS needs to advertise the community content and mp) (http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard311/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=64;t=46943)

tankieboy you are right to this extent.
the main problem is what i think, a lot of very talented people here visit the forum and maybe the major news site, but addon and mod development is going somewhat almost completely their own way - there almost none cooperation  with campaign-, leagues- and multiplayer-community.
there is such a big hype about addons in this forum but the connection to the other parts lacks a lot   http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/confused_o.gif

to give you a feeling what cain might mean is:
~ ofp and arma needs new and much better public maps
~ people which want to run leagues, develop new concepts of gameplay

games arent about addons in general - only in the case of ofp this part made it live longer (yet most parts of the multiplayer sector dont use addons by now or only for like some months).

of course without much details its hard to guess, but as far as my experiences are concerned i dont see much people with visions which might be able to create with arma

is very important for arma to be successful from the start (which means content, leagues, multiplayer, missions) in my view ... otherwise arma and we might miss the chance this game has !

[tankieboy]

I think the game will be very well supported by the community. My post still stands.

As for the addons. Its the only reason I play and getting British units into the game is my main reason of being in this community. I can not stand playing MP without addons.

[[MSD] Psych0]

hey Q back again hm? still cheatin http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/wink_o.gif

i can remember the real german ofp site, which was closed after a couple of time

it was my way into ofp and i think anything like this is needed again

Oh heres the old url

http://www.operation-flashpoint.de/alt_ofpde/alt_ofpde.html

[cain2001]

It’s like AvonLad once said, So many great addons but so few missions. And today its no people to play them. If I were an addonmaker or a mission maker, whats the point putting down 40hours work on a Map or a Addon if only 2-3 people will ever use it. If people with help from the community got these sweet maps and addons, they request of better missions would increase. In the long run we would have more mission makers, more active players and higher quality on the maps.

Competition is the key to technology, but with no Competition or no knowledge of each other this can’t be accomplished. I want ArAs to have 5 Keygetys and 50 mods with the quality of the addons BAS made. The part where this community have failed the most is the gaming part. Clans, leagues and professional gaming are what is dominated in other games. In OFP it’s a shame being a CTF player. And maybe it’s true because most CTF players are Corner Camping ten year olds who play the same desert/buildings maps day out day in. Only 10% of the total clan players have dedicated their time to CTI, C&H and other more OFP style maps. If I knew this would happen 3 years ago I would start my own league and make it right from the beginning. And that’s why I am saying this now, 1 year in advance.

We need to get more coop nights, more active clans, more mission and mod makers to release more stuff. And someone needs to combine all these stuff to let everyone know what’s going on in this game.

There could be so much more instead of 500 OFP servers to 250 players. Events like OFP Ryder Cup is things that made it fun playing OFP! West meets East, how much better can it get. Big 20vs20 BF1985 maps on FDF Mod or BAS weapons.



//Cain

[Espectro]

While ofp was being developped. BIS realeased ingame vidoes of all the vehicles as they progressed... This was during a couple years. They also had diaries etc.

That was how i came into ofp.
BIS, show yourself! Please - unless youll make a dead game once again http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/sad_o.gif

[Mr.BerZerk]

About where AmA comunity is? well i dont know any "AmA" community, atleast not iet, but i guess u can count on www.Ofp.Info to be the most active about the AmA stuff after its release. Since this basicly is Operation flashpoint 1.5 (as people is refering to it) and it will contain the curent ofp stuff that youve seen in all releases.
But! AmA will also include new stuff, like a new physics engine (or atleast updated) and some other stuff i forgot what :P

[cain2001]

Hey Q, atleast i got a few more replies than your 1 you had in your thread http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/wink_o.gif Nah, its sad, people rather discuss what colour they want on their OFP Box than whats important, atleast what i think. thx for the guys here who alteast read and replied http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/smile_o.gif WE better hope Keygetys sticks around for AA...

[MATRA]

I hope when they manage to find the new publisher, things will change, maybe they dont want to release any more information before they know who will take care of all the issues regarding ArmA image and divulgation.

*I agree the ArmA home page needs a restyling, but many of the great game pages outthere are from the games publishers and not from the DEVs teams.

*I also agree that ArmA needs a lot more divulgation, to "catch new blood" to the community, videos, screens etc. Take a look at BF2, videos all weeks screens etc, at the end there was people that cant even sleep waiting for it, I know it sucks and have bugs everywhere, and I hate it, but it made a wonderful publicity campain.

Bur again I do belive that all this will be solve with the publisher annoucement.

[Goeth]

Well cain2001 we´re pretty tired of the old flashpoint right now but you can bet your sweet ass that when the armed arse is released, then the "community" around is is going to be pretty big and excited.

[Homefry]

The community is right here... the OFP community will slowly (or quickly) migrate over to Armed Assualt... and I imagine we will pick up plenty of new people too.

[DrBobcat]

Imo, its still kind of early to start on an Armed Assault community as so little information has been released. When we really can get a list of the features avaliable we can start planning out our mods and everything... but I feel we just do not have enough info to start basing around the hype.

Just gotta be patient....

EDIT: And besides, without any real news on a publisher, that makes it incredibly difficult to get things like videos, websites, and such. I mean the developers are too busy working on the game itself to get heavily involved in those things, lol.

[Espectro]

Imo, its still kind of early to start on an Armed Assault community as so little information has been released. When we really can get a list of the features avaliable we can start planning out our mods and everything... but I feel we just do not have enough info to start basing around the hype.

Just gotta be patient....

EDIT: And besides, without any real news on a publisher, that makes it incredibly difficult to get things like videos, websites, and such. I mean the developers are too busy working on the game itself to get heavily involved in those things, lol.
But thats the error...

Games like half-life2 had communities 5 years prior release....

bad PR...

[cleanrock]

BIS should start using a better forum for ArmA to make searching more fruitful.

[DrBobcat]

Quote[/b] ]But thats the error...

Games like half-life2 had communities 5 years prior release....

bad PR...

Uhh...... but I imagine hl2 had a publisher, even at that stage of the game, and not to mention a much higher player base from the previous title.

It is not easy, nor realistic, to get a substantial amount of publicity before the game has a publisher. That is what a publisher does in the first place! DURH!

Cat

EDIT: And without publicity, we don't have content to share as the customers and "fanbois." We have no choice at all, like I said before, then to just wait for more information and content to be released about Armed Assault. As soon as we have more screens, and maybe some videos (or even a demo), we will be able to then share with the gaming crowd en masse. For right now, I think we should just tell all of our friends about the game about how fricken awesome we think its gonna be.... that's what I've done  http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/wink_o.gif

EDIT 2: If you really feel the need to feed them fires of product advertisement, then I say we should get someone of the community to put a fansite for the game. Then get it around to a bunch of people. If its well done, people will want to come back to read up on the news, and when the game is released, download addons and such.

No, I'm not offering myself for the job, http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/nener.gif

[zyklone]

It's really not much of a wonder we've ended in this situation.

BIS support for the online scene has not been very good.
The support for the modding community has been excellent though.

This is why we now have 3406 variants of the M4 and 230 differently textured Humvees. But 0 missions using them.
You can also compare the number of addon groups creating buildings to those concentrating on retexturing weapons.
Buildings are important, weapons are not. Lots of credit for the current scene should go to the likes of Mapfact that actually create
things island designers need and can use.


You need good missions to get people to actually use these addons though. And the number of mission designers is very small.

I'm sure it'll be a bit better if ArmA will support automatic pbo download from the server and better pbo version control.
It's just too difficult to get all players to use the same addons now.

BIS also needs to set some basic standard on how different addons should be balanced against eachother.
Sure, some addon makers won't follow them. But then we just won't use their addons in missions.

As it is almost all addons use their own armour/damage values, making them useless.

[DrBobcat]

IMHO, I think ArAs will be a clean slate and everything. We will be able to start over on the playerbase because of the new title but have a fresher start with the better netcode and the many, many other fixes. And I know I will create missions like crazy when its released! That is all I do right now for OFP1, except they are all personal sp missions (again because the MP community for FP1 blows)

I believe we will have a second shot with the next game, but will also have all the knowledge about the engine as we do now such as with modding and such. We sure will be able to lay out a great foundation for the game at launch...

Cat

EDIT: Oh, and yeah we will need to have a more organized method of addon making, such as armor/balistic values, texture quality, polygons, etc. Uniformity and consistency will make the community much more effecient and effective. Same goes for missions... a much more active and diverse mission community will particularly affect the likelihood of the games' success!

[cain2001]

many good points, but BiS crew on 20+ ppl? Cant be compared to what a dedicated OFP:R Community with 5000+ people could do. I already said that MOD Makers, Mission Makers are already doing their part, but theres only a few people who put this things together and make them work. People need help to know what maps are good and what addons to use. They need a server and a forum or else their instrest will fall.

I wouldnt be bad if BiS had official Servers running and more official addons released in their patches. Even they had more of their own missions. But like I said, they are only 20+ and were 5000+.

But what I would like it to see 50000 doing that very same work. It would benifit everyone.

Remember that OFP sold in over 1 million copies, but yet i only see 564 playing on ASE? http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/wink_o.gif

Good to see some more people sharing their inputs!


//Cain

[Fork122]

I'd give anything not to have a community like HL2. HL2 messages boards have about 500 topics that are titled "0Mg AlYx is H0t!". At least over on the Flashpoint message boards we can read topics without having to look through hundreds of threads not having to do anything with the game. I'm worried about a bunch of new members coming when ArmA and the Next-Gen PC Game gets released. Just imagine all the 12 year olds from Counter-Strike coming to the message boards and filling it with worthless spam http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/crazy_o.gif

[DrBobcat]

many good points, but BiS crew on 20+ ppl? Cant be compared to what a dedicated OFP:R Community with 5000+ people could do. I already said that MOD Makers, Mission Makers are already doing their part, but theres only a few people who put this things together and make them work. People need help to know what maps are good and what addons to use. They need a server and a forum or else their instrest will fall.

I wouldnt be bad if BiS had official Servers running and more official addons released in their patches. Even they had more of their own missions. But like I said, they are only 20+ and were 5000+.

....
Wow. My point exactly! If we had official servers... OMG! PWNAGE! lol. That would be a great thing to have, but right now we just do not have a great way of getting all the info to all the people... I hope that we can have a definitive ArAs website that tells of all the clans, tournaments, missions, and addons so that everyone will be up to date on everything. Ofp.cz is the closest thing we got to that right now, IMO...

But I still think we gotta wait a little bit for more info on the game to be released before we can get such a massive undertaking underway....

Cat

[Reclus3]

The problem with OFP 1 and dedicated servers was the lack of "JIP" ( Join in Progress). I hated sitting around in a room waiting for a mission to get over before I could join, so I usually went and did my own thing.

With "JIP" being added dedicated servers will be more plentiful do to the fact ppl can play whenever they want and not have to wait for a half hour oe more.

If there are dedicated servers up for ArAs then things around the community will be alot different. We wont complain about the wait anymore, but the fact that every server is full and we cant get in, which IMHO is alot better.

[DrBobcat]

OMG! Wow! I can't believe I forgot about JiP... that truly will change a whole bunch of things in the game... such as dynamic mp campaigns, never-ending rpg-esque games, among many other things. However, JiP for a coop game would be difficult, but I know we will find one way or another to work it out (we always seem to http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/wink_o.gif )

Cat

[Reclus3]

Maybe a way to have waypoints in a coop that have reinforcment like spawns for players just coming in - And after you get to that waypoint it moves the next reinforcment to the next one.

Would be cool to join in game and have to defend a spot till the the people already in game show up to help. And move on from there.

Anyway just throwing that out.

[Espectro]

OMG! Wow! I can't believe I forgot about JiP... that truly will change a whole bunch of things in the game... such as dynamic mp campaigns, never-ending rpg-esque games, among many other things. However, JiP for a coop game would be difficult, but I know we will find one way or another to work it out (we always seem to  http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/wink_o.gif )

Cat
Just imagine the possibilities dor reinforcements http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/smile_o.gif?

[SGT. Hurley]

Why not create a Forum about Armed Assault? Solely based on it, if someone wants to lend me a hand, I can put one together....

EDIT: I have created one - http://aainfo.cjb.net - If anyone would like to help, post on the forums, post here, email me or PM me.

[Berghoff]

Why not create a Forum about Armed Assault? Solely based on it, if someone wants to lend me a hand, I can put one together....

EDIT: I have created one - http://aainfo.cjb.net - If anyone would like to help, post on the forums, post here, email me or PM me.
This is the Armed Assault Forum? http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/huh.gif

[[IT|Q]]

yea i dont think another forum is necessary at this point. thanks mate though http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/smile_o.gif

[whisper]

OMG! Wow! I can't believe I forgot about JiP... that truly will change a whole bunch of things in the game... such as dynamic mp campaigns, never-ending rpg-esque games, among many other things. However, JiP for a coop game would be difficult, but I know we will find one way or another to work it out (we always seem to http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/wink_o.gif )

Cat
Just imagine the possibilities dor reinforcements http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/smile_o.gif?
OFP + JiP = http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/notworthy.gif

Thus ArmA = http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/notworthy.gif http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/notworthy.gif

With OFP editor, the possibilities are, like endless, only limited by map size, and server specs.

[cain2001]

good work Hurley, its nice to see people with the will, but like some said, a main forum has to be linked to the creaters or publishers, its really hard to get a forum active.

BiS will have another month to prepar the release of Armed Assualt but if nothing is released by then, im afride that many players will not be able to see what the OFP games is about.

Hopefully mods like WGL, FDF and Inv44 will make alot of people aware of their work.

Time will Tell http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/smile_o.gif

[FCOPZ-Illuminator]

One way is to release a "Website Fan Kit" with some models, screens...ect..., so we can start our own real community site....

[Balschoiw]

Quote[/b] ]BiS will have another month to prepar the release of Armed Assualt but if nothing is released by then, im afride that many players will not be able to see what the OFP games is about.
As far as we know AA will be released around christmas, not earlier http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/huh.gif

And one more thing: This is the official Armed Assault forum. What more do you want ? If you check the upper section of the screen you see "Bohemia Interactive Forums". That means that products developed by BIS get their coverage here. I don´t see your point of an extra extra forum for any single product. As AA is based on OFP 1 it makes sense to put it here. I guess it´s more easy for BIS staff and us to browse a single forum where all the products are present than to URL jump to different forums.
There are already various AA forums on the major OFP pages and AA pages that deal exclusively with AA but as it is the developers forums here I guess it´s best to keep them all united.

[Espectro]

Quote[/b] ]BiS will have another month to prepar the release of Armed Assualt but if nothing is released by then, im afride that many players will not be able to see what the OFP games is about.
As far as we know AA will be released around christmas, not earlier  http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/huh.gif

And one more thing: This is the official Armed Assault forum. What more do you want ? If you check the upper section of the screen you see "Bohemia Interactive Forums". That means that products developed by BIS get their coverage here. I don´t see your point of an extra extra forum for any single product. As AA is based on OFP 1 it makes sense to put it here. I guess it´s more easy for BIS staff and us to browse a single forum where all the products are present than to URL jump to different forums.
There are already various AA forums on the major OFP pages and AA pages that deal exclusively with AA but as it is the developers forums here I guess it´s best to keep them all united.
In that case, the forum should be moved to armedassault.com

Its a weird url for the people not knowing flashpoint.

or at least they could make the subdomain forum.armedassault.com point towards this forum

[Balschoiw]

The Armed assault forum is already linked there http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/wink_o.gif
So people who visit the page only need to click on the link to get to:
"If you want to discuss our game with other players and fans feel free to visit our official Armed Assault forum."

What more does it need ? http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/huh.gif

[Messiah]

just to say my part...

On the halflife 2 note... they didnt have a new community 5 years prior to release... they retained the Half Life 1 community... the same will happen to armed assault... the community for armed assault is what you see here already - i'd bet any amount of money that every active member of the flashpoint community will purchase, and use armed assault... there's your instant community, there's your instant fanbase, and since we have some many fansites for flashpoint, i can very well see them expanding their coverage to armed assault...

bis know where and who their fan base are, hence they're activly considering and helping the current mod/addons etc to be intergrated into armed assault as easily as possible... they know we are the community that armed assault requires... they need not start a new one...

just wait and see.

[7,62]

nice work there hurley! http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/yay.gif if the armed assault forum go down(SERVER UPDATE or something like this http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/wink_o.gif ) than its the other forum and u know what happens on bis forum(or u will try to know http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/tounge2.gif ) any way, its looks very professional! http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/wow_o.gif