An open letter to the ArmA community.

[Paco454]

I may not be the brightest guy around but I have to admit, I think I been taken for a ride by BIS.
Let me break this down into several categories, first the amount of time to given to the hype before it’s release, second the videos that were released and finally the interviews.

Time: The hype before this game was released went back years in advance. BIS spent years, it appears, making the game. Plenty of time to do it’s work. One would think after years of development the game would be polished, tested and optimized.

Pre- release videos and interviews: Apart for the few chopper videos the game looked polished. Even the intro videos showed vehicles turning on roads, no indication of any real problems, in fact it looked very good. Interviews made it also appear to be polished.

Now here’s the truth as I see it. The chez and German version are released and now the cats out of the bag. It’s clear to me that something is very wrong. It looks as if BIS intentionally mislead people about the state of the game. I draw attention first to the intro videos see when launching the game. There is no way those vehicles made the turns around the bends as they do in the video with AI behind the wheel. I’m sure the intro video was recorded using real people driving during a multi player session. The AI in game when following way points stop at every way point then continue on their way, so the AI were not driving in those videos. Next the flight models. How could BIS see fit to release the game when chopper controls were so bad, not to mention the fixed wing aircraft which were almost impossible to fly. (Seemly fixed in v1.02 yet still some issues with controls)
This brings into focus now a very long list of bugs the game had when it was released. The BIS bug reporting WIKI and the BIS forum is chalk full of complaints and people reporting all kinds of bugs. Collision problems, AI walking through walls, other AI issues, sound problems, video problems, controller problems just to name a few are among a very, very long list of hundreds of bugs.
I’m having trouble understanding that BIS wasn’t aware of all these problems given the years of development, moreover, the fact really none of these issues were seen in any of the videos, although some issues were seen and it was assumed those would be corrected which evidently were not fixed at it’s release. Collision issues are so bad some AI tanks, when bumping into each other, can send tanks flying 200 feet in the air. BIS can’t tell me they didn’t know about these problems.

From this information I conclude that BIS intentionally released ArmA in beta form as part of a money grab. Intentionally lead people to believe the game was in good working order through videos and interviews, when in fact it was still in early beta and was absolutely bug ridden and did very little in house testing, then setup a bug reporting WIKI and used the people who bought the chez and German version as unwilling beta testers to work out the bugs.
A far as I’m concerned, I do believe the community, if it had been informed there were staffing issues or other problems with the game in which it wasn’t feasible for in house testing that they informed the community they would release the game for sale as a beta and then asked the community to help work out the bugs, I could understand and even support, however this method of misleading everybody is unacceptable, and I think a class action suit should be filed against BIS for intentionally misleading the owners of the German and Chez versions. These owners should be given a full refund and then compensated for being involuntary, unwilling beta testers. There is no excuse after 6 years of development for something like this to happen. They have simply mislead everybody to highest possible degree and then took their money under cloak of deception and then setup a forum and WIKI to use as "their" platform to work out it’s problems at the expense of paying customers.

I will certainly think twice before buying another BIS product. Don't get me wrong I like the game, I just don't like the BS.

PACO454
Unwilling, Forced Beta Tester.

[DM]

Sigh...

What BI have done in their advertising and PR campaign is no different to what any other company does when selling their games. Infact BI uses purely ingame footage for their PR, unlike some games which use FMV for their advertising...

As for

Quote[/b] ]The hype before this game was released went back years in advance. BIS spent years, it appears, making the game. Plenty of time to do it’s work. One would think after years of development

I'll repeat myself for the billionth time..

Quote[/b] ]Wrong, wrong and wrong again.

Why does everyone automaticlly assume that ArmA development started the second BI was finished with OFP:R.

ArmA as we know it only really came into existance in late 2005, infact I'm more inclined to suggest that in its current state it probably didnt come into existance until early 2006.

Look at it like this: in mid 2005 (at E3 or whatever expo it was) BI announced ArmA. Look at the screenshots of ArmA back then, it was the OFP:E engine brought back to PC. Look at ArmA now, it&#39;s totally different and looks a bit like Game2 was starting to look like ~10 months ago. What can we deduce from this? We can deduce this: ArmA as it was when it was announced, is NOT the same ArmA as we have now. Therefore, ArmA we have now is <1 year old. Not bad when you consider the dev time for most other games (excluding the bullshit movie tie ins and all that other crap).

...

[Paco454]

Sigh...

What BI have done in their advertising and PR campaign is no different to what any other company does when selling their games. Infact BI uses purely ingame footage for their PR, unlike some games which use FMV for their advertising...

As for

Quote[/b] ]The hype before this game was released went back years in advance. BIS spent years, it appears, making the game. Plenty of time to do it’s work. One would think after years of development

I&#39;ll repeat myself for the billionth time..

Quote[/b] ]Wrong, wrong and wrong again.

Why does everyone automaticlly assume that ArmA development started the second BI was finished with OFP:R.

ArmA as we know it only really came into existance in late 2005, infact I&#39;m more inclined to suggest that in its current state it probably didnt come into existance until early 2006.

Look at it like this: in mid 2005 (at E3 or whatever expo it was) BI announced ArmA. Look at the screenshots of ArmA back then, it was the OFP:E engine brought back to PC. Look at ArmA now, it&#39;s totally different and looks a bit like Game2 was starting to look like ~10 months ago. What can we deduce from this? We can deduce this: ArmA as it was when it was announced, is NOT the same ArmA as we have now. Therefore, ArmA we have now is <1 year old. Not bad when you consider the dev time for most other games (excluding the bullshit movie tie ins and all that other crap).

...

Undestood, and stand corrected.

PACO454

[Sickboy]

If you ask me, ... 505 choose to release the game when it&#39;s finished.. in 2 months, while the CZ and GER publishers wanted the game to sell around Christmas despite the state... That&#39;s what I think, but who am i

[Adumb]

Dont you have some trees to hug?


*Looks at signature*

[J W]

Dont you have some trees to hug?


*Looks at signature*

Don&#39;t you have something important to add to this thread?

--------------------

Yes, I am with DMX here, since many, as he said, belives that ArmA was started when OFP was finished.

But, if I can ask some questions back:

1. You are complaining about the flightmodel: Since when is Armed Assault a flightsim?
2. Ok, maybe ArmA does have bugs, and maybe alot of them: Mention a bugfree game that is superperfect in all aspects?
3. Come on, they&#39;re running a company, not a sandbox. All companies makes their product look extra good by not showing the downsides: Think of it, if you buy something, either, it doesn&#39;t have functions that the same product by another brand has, not the same weight, controls etc, but you buy it anyways, and keep quiet about it. Why not the same for Armed Assault, because I&#39;m sure they&#39;ll fix it in further patches?
4. You think something is wrong by setting up a Wiki for reporting bugs: Sure, maybe it&#39;s better to have 6 trillion threads saying "OMG, I&#39;ve found a bug&#33;&#33;"?
5. If you don&#39;t like it: Don&#39;t play it, do it better yourself, or basicly stop whining.

No offence, but that&#39;s just my point of view.
If you do not wish to answer my question, it&#39;s OK

at the end of the day.... ARMA is out... and we have it. No more waiting, no more speculating.
IMO the look of ARMA is amazing, the fact that the map size is x amount bigger than other games makes this game above and beyond whats out there. As far as bugs go.... these days we have the chance to patch games. Therefore games will often have bugs. yeah its frustrating..... my ARMA crashes after 5 minutes almost everytime i play..not just the game but my whole computer. I have pretty current SLI dual core system... but I dont seem to really care now because I figure it will get fixed with time. The first time I played OFP was on the xbox . For me it was a great game and a whole new experience which I can never top with any other game. I dont know the dates, but ofp had been out along time ago. Im sure it had bad bugs and other issues. But look at how huge the community is after all that time. At some point ARMA will run solid. And it will probally be better than any other game released in terms of the potential for modding and editing missions to have anything happen that you can dream of....limited to a certain extent... I dont see any other game existing on the market which allows you to script and edit missions like it is doing. please let me know if there is one similar cause id also like to try it.

What im trying to say is ARMA has huge potential.... and game 2 will most likely be the big next step..... but until that comes out we have ARMA which is using dx9. This is better than staying with ofp until game 2 is released. just my opinion on the matter...

[Taxidriver]

While I also don&#39;t understand while after the succes of OFP, there apperently wasn&#39;t more development done on ArmA by now (perhaps Codemasters ran with the dollars?). I do understand publishers wanting to get the game out now (ethical no, logical yes). But filing a class action suit against about the only developer who is really serious about making realistic teamwork oriented games, doesn&#39;t look like the smartest thing to do from the viewpoint of a realism/teamwork fan. Apperently it is already difficult to get games published for this market and filings suits certainly won&#39;t improve that.

[Franze]

Things like this should be in ArmA General. Moving.

[Kevlar2007]

I agree with you Paco454.
But BIS is not alone here, almost all games I bought in recent time were screwed at the begining, but ArmA is far the most buggiest I had till today, sad but I must admit that.