ArmA is just ... disappointing

[W0lle]

To be honest I don't understand the hype about the tools. How many years passed by after the initial release of OFP before the tools was released?

As much as I understand that the addonmakers need them, I also can understand BI that they release the tools when they think the time is right (and bugs are fixed).
Buggy and crashing tools don't serve anyone and results only in even more BI bashing.

[seba1976]

To be honest I don't understand the hype about the tools. How many years passed by after the initial release of OFP before the tools was released?

May be it is because ArmA was release in such a way that the only hope it has is that modders work on it to add everything the game should have had from start? BIS has an incredible group of people, eager to work to improve their product, and ask nothing in return. The community is willing to even work to solve all the bugs it can, and the only thing that stands between them and ArmA, is BIS. May be that's why all the hype.

[seba1976]

By the way - why stop one thread and open another identical thread? Aren't we (the forum peasants) always being told not to start new threads but to use the already established threads? And I'm pretty sure a search of game disappointments would have thrown up a few more. This site is modded strangely to be sure.

Like I said in the Ask a moderator thread I'll make 2 threads for complaining and praising which will replace all other existing ones.

Sure I could have merged the old disappointing thread but then my inital post would have been moved to the end of the thread because it's newer and I wanted it to be on top for a good reason. ***

I see your point, you wanted for some reason to put those barely relevant lines at the start of the thread, now you see mine.

For the begining and most important part of this topic, please refer to original topic

There was many good points already made, that people don't want to make clear again, as well as good discussions about the issues with ArmA.

[SHWiiNG]

oh oh ok my turn,

1. Ai Feel very mechanical and show no real emotion or change character when in different environments like calm and Firefight.
2. The game still lacks excitement and tension.
3. Tank / vehicle battles are a very boring spectacle (look at COH) and the damage could be improved like Sparks Effects or Bullet holes.

[bravo 6]

I rader not say it's totally disapointing but i think ARMA could be better and improved in:
[*] Animations (more real/natural, transmiting a better/realistic feeling to the player)[*] Sounds (some are incomplete)[*] AI behaviour ("inteligence")[*] AI aim/fire precision[*] Dense foliage (low FPS)[*] I feel that i can not have huge battles in ARMA like was said before ARMA came out. ARMA does lag like hell if big battles are involved.

To be honest i don't feel the same pleasure i had when i played OFP.
I don't feel the same inspiration i had while building missions.
Maybe i expected more from ARMA.. maybe im alittle disapointed but not totally, i still have hope for this great game.

[colossus]

BIS has done a great job from what little time and resources they had/got. Maybe would have helped if BIS and BIA could have shared more content like the tracers and sounds, who knows. But all in all they've done a good job in what time they had.

I really hope that Game 2 will be something else though. AIs and squads still don't communicate with each other for information about enemy whereabouts, and the lack of a radar system and a proper AA system (modern day missile systems and anti-AA systems: IR jammer, chaff & flares) still makes ArmA a bit "loose" in it's realism. Just a simple radar dome building would have sparked up the feeling a bit.

However, I'm really impressed that they have pushed the size of their island as far as 400 sq.km in real-time. Which is quite impressive if you think of all the other games made up until now.

[ArmaVidz]

Let me start by saying I like Armed Assault more than I dislike the "worst parts" of it. That said, these are my complaints:

1. No Dual-Core optimization. Waste of PC power.
2. Tracers are horrible. For such an integral part of immersiveness, this should not have been overlooked.
3. Default weapon sounds and vehicle sounds prove aggrevatingly irritating at best. Thank you FDF for making them truly enjoyable.
4. Wildly confusing issues with publishers and availability causing confusion of the consumers. "Which version will I get?"
5. ***Realistic reactions from AI in-game without community made scripting which implement audible feedback.
6. As Radar stated, large battles are not possible without your game becoming a "slide show" per se. (This may be caused by lack of multithreading?)
7. Building damage: Collapse is nice, but damage modelling would be ideal.
8. Pathifinding for AI: "jerky" "wild" "round-and-round" pathfinding kills immersiveness. Especially in varying types armor.
9. Shooting from vehicles MIA. Another monolith feature that should have been a high-priority for immersiveness.
10. No naval vessels. RHIBS are great, thanks, but where are the carriers, destroyers and LSI's?
11. Great modelling on the A-10, bad implementation of the Avenger 7-Barrel in regard to smoke from the barrel, sound and visual damage on the ground.
12. Harrier's AI that cannot effectively engage armored targets (or any targets for that matter) consistently on the ground. One of the largest hypes of ArmA was the Harrier...this practical non-delivery.
13. Artillery MIA. (modding community has rectified this to some degree).
14. No radar lock on jets/heli's.
15. No Surface to air missiles.
EDIT 16. The music in the missions is ear piercing, and should be re-encoded with some treble loss. I have to turn it off in the options which makes me think sometimes, other sounds are being muted as well (not confirmed).

Lastly, the modding tools. I have a big beef with this as the modding community (which I am not a part of) has cited the tools as the primary reason some of these issues haven't been resolved. I feel that if BI were to acknowledge these points from the community and release (even in a buggy state) the tools to the community they would be able to solve most of this for us. The lack of tools now leaves the community without options, which leads to frustration...

All in all, it's still great. A big part of that reason is the mod community.

[Blanco]

My two biggest complaints are:

-Pathfinding. It's the worst I've ever seen, sorry.
Just watch how units board a vehicle in a city and it looks like your watching a comedy.

-Still a very complex command interface.
I wish we could create preset behaviors.
Formation, behavior, speedmode and rules of engagement combined in a preset so we can quickly select it during the battle. Micromanagement is nice but you don't need it all the time imo.

Orders in a queue could solve these things a bit, but we can't do that in Arma (nor in OFP) You always have to wait until an order is achieved before you can give the next order.

[william1]

my principal complaints are :

-sometimes LOD's take some time to charge correctly
-Ai accuracy
- Ai not following given paths
- choppers to weak !

well , it think is enough by now ...

[Silvio Camolesi]

After a brief excitement, I'm sad to announce that for me this game is crap.

I saw ArmA for the first time about two months ago when reading a forum about games in general. That age I didn't realize that ArmA was from Bohemia.

When I received a newsletter from Gamestop with details I couldn't believe what I was reading: the spiritual sequel from my favourite game ever!

But that was true, and I didn't linger to buy it from Sprocket.

Since then until now is one disappointment after other one, cause my mainly objective was to revival the same adventure that I lived with OFP Cold War Crisis, Red Hammer and Resistance so many times.

And that has been impossible cause the lack of the inteligence of the AIs.

If AI means Artificial Inteligence, in ArmA it should mean Artificial Idiot, cause I never saw such morons so well simulated.

They do everything wrong, they don't obey, they fail, they do things that a human would never do, they are so stupid that is hard to believe that these are the same from old OFP.

I'm not saying that OFP had brilliant AIs. No, they were not so good, but in ArmA they are simply awful!

Beside AIs, and the various bugs that I can't stop to find out, the Campaign.. oh... my... God... waht is that?

There are missions sincerely boring.

This is not the sequel of the OFP.

That should be great, vertiginous, stupendous, something that stimulate you to desire more, do not get away from the pc.

Is there hope in the future patches? I don't know.

I have the lastest beta patch, and that is supposed to be much better than 1.05 version, but there are so many bugs, the AIs are so stupid and the Missions from CA are so boring that I can't believe in the future.

Will be possible to improve the AIs behavior? Will we have a decent Single Player experience?

I can't play this game anymore... and that is so frustrating