Suggestions to improve Arma 3 for low-mod communities

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SuicideKing
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Re: Suggestions to improve Arma 3 for low-mod communities

Post by SuicideKing »

AJAX wrote:P.S.S. FYI, BI has stated before that they have no intention of working on VON, they are aware of TeamSeak.... It is at the bottom of every list they have.
Well they've switched the codec already, and from dev branch:

Code: Select all

Added: Support for muting the VON channels in the server.cfg
Tweaked: The VON and chat channels are now separated
Tweaked: The channelEnabled and enableChannel script commands now support a separate muting of the VON and chat
...
Fixed: The Voice-Over-Net technology was stuttering on the Global and Side channels
So they're clearly not abandoning it. I don't expect anything but it's something FA would benefit from immensely - which is the point of this thread.

I think I'll add the GPS and getting stuck to the list (most relevant to FA), and add the rest in the bottom section. I'm not sure whether or not the attachment thing is possible within the engine. They'll probably have to do a context sensitive attachTo...same goes for repack, how would it work?
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Re: Suggestions to improve Arma 3 for low-mod communities

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fer wrote:
SuicideKing wrote:And yes, this will have to be presented to BIS as a personal list but maybe linking back here to our forums for discussion (or however the hosts want it done in the end).
If it's a personal submission (and it is), there's no need to link to this thread and imply FA 'support'. Your list and my list have some crossover, but they're by no means the same, and that's just two of us! However, perhaps you can amend your OP to suggest any comrade posting to this thread is - by that act - granting you permission to quote them (perhaps unattributed) in your submission?

One other thought: can you replicate for other requests, stats like the number of folks who voted for female characters? That's a powerful and hopefully compelling data point. If your submission was able to reference other public requests for each feature (ideally with stats, or at least with aggregated links), it makes the list appear more considered. For example, being able to say that the request for AKs is the most popular weapon request by a factor of X (over nearest rival).
Fixed and added a wikipedia link that shows numbers of AKs produced. I have no idea how popular of a request it is. There's no easy way to check either because that feedback tracker has been down for ages.
Aqarius wrote:I'd hazard a guess that the HMG/AAA/APC stuff is a symptom of a common cause. A3 suffers from extensive model reuse. AAA vehicles, both of them, use the same turret. SPGs use the same turret. Kamysh and Gorgon share a turret too. All CROWS are the same, across all factions, vehicles, and UGVs. The only difference is the caliber. In fact, there are basically no exposed gunners: all guns are either turrets or CROWS. The most interesting vehicles in the game, I'd argue, are the Marshal and the Mora, precisely because they buck this trend.
An interesting, inverse phenomenon seems to affect the small arms: NATO has no LMG, AAF has no SAW or MMG, and CSAT has no SAW or LMG (But has two MMGs). This, it turns out, is not only not that negative, but livens up the gameplay.

Another thing to note is that the game doesn't have a LAW. And I mean a proper, disposable AT launcher. the Titan and the NLAW are both guided, and have a minimum range, making them practically useless in urban combat. Some titans have backup SACLOS, but only some, and you won't know which until it's too late. Even the RPG-32 is closer to the MAAWS than an AT4. For another comparison: A FGM-148 Javelin launcher unit costs 126000 USD. Each missile costs 78000 USD. An NLAW is disposable, at 25000 a shot. A Carl Gustav tube is 25000, with rounds being around 2000 each. An RPG-18 costs 300$. It's as if the intention is to equal out the increased vehicle lethality with infantry lethality, but the only effect was just increasing the engagement distance.
Ironically, the simultaneous increase in infantry kevlar is both not enough to offset the improved veh. accuracy and engagement distance, and quite enough to chop small arms lethality envelope to under 200m, basically necessitating crew served stuff for 400-500m ranges. Almost as if the entire balance of the game shifted from infantry to vehicles, which is precisely what makes the samey vehicles such an eyesore.
This is great stuff. I think I sort of have these things covered between the various points, although I could add the point about urban combat and engagement distance. Probably will throw in the RPG-18 and how it's much cheaper...

But yeah, the reskins and reuse are a bit sad.
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Re: Suggestions to improve Arma 3 for low-mod communities

Post by madrak_the_red »

I'm not sure Fer meant real world stats, more like stats that show demand from the community
TURN OUT FOR WHAT

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Re: Suggestions to improve Arma 3 for low-mod communities

Post by darkChozo »

A suggestion, you may want to break this up into smaller, more focused posts. List posts like this have a lot of problems; they tend to create a very fragmented discussion, they're often long enough that people don't bother reading them, and worst case they can come across as a manifesto or list of demands instead of just suggestions. They work in a few instances (usually "here's some bugs" or "I just started playing this game and here's what I think"), but I suspect this isn't one of them.

Also, many of the things you suggest involve introducing new content into the game. I'd love more content, of course, and I want a lot of those things but suggesting all of them at once can come across as a bit unrealistic. Just listing, you're asking for a bunch of new character models (or at least partial ones), a new static, several new vehicles, and several new weapons. That's more than a DLC's worth of content. I realize you suggested importing ARMA 2 models to help, but BI would likely want to upgrade those to A3 standards, plus they'd essentially be retreading territory already covered by mods.

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Re: Suggestions to improve Arma 3 for low-mod communities

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madrak_the_red wrote:I'm not sure Fer meant real world stats, more like stats that show demand from the community
Yeah, but I really don't know where to get those stats from...
darkChozo wrote:A suggestion, you may want to break this up into smaller, more focused posts. List posts like this have a lot of problems; they tend to create a very fragmented discussion, they're often long enough that people don't bother reading them, and worst case they can come across as a manifesto or list of demands instead of just suggestions. They work in a few instances (usually "here's some bugs" or "I just started playing this game and here's what I think"), but I suspect this isn't one of them.
Yeah, I've been thinking along the same lines, tbh. There's a thread for community requests without discussion, and I could post a shorter version of the list there, with links to each topic's own sub-thread. The first post in that thread is probably 5x as long as this, and got pinned, so I don't know what to tell you.
darkChozo wrote: Also, many of the things you suggest involve introducing new content into the game. I'd love more content, of course, and I want a lot of those things but suggesting all of them at once can come across as a bit unrealistic. Just listing, you're asking for a bunch of new character models (or at least partial ones), a new static, several new vehicles, and several new weapons. That's more than a DLC's worth of content. I realize you suggested importing ARMA 2 models to help, but BI would likely want to upgrade those to A3 standards, plus they'd essentially be retreading territory already covered by mods.
I know, but that's the whole point - it's content that's sorely needed for mod free communities, which is why I had originally thought of saying "hey I play here, this is how it'll help us". It's also why I'm taking the effort to write up justifications. Whether or not BIS go ahead is up to them (and it's not like they have a whole bunch of variety anyway - see Aqarius' post), I can only make them see how and why it's useful. BIS is also welcome to release this stuff as DLC, didn't they ask us to pay for go-karts too? This stuff would be way more frequently used imo.

Finally, it's also why I'm not including everything that people are posting here (stuff in the "other" list will probably be cut from the final thing) - not because they're not things that aren't needed, but because the whole idea of this was to bring to BIS' attention very community focused stuff (that affect missions, interaction, etc - see those 5 criteria in the first post).
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Re: Suggestions to improve Arma 3 for low-mod communities

Post by Costno »

I have nothing substantial to add as a suggestion, just to voice that the direct VON slider is possibly the most important thing that I would want to see changed.

As for low tech stuff, I have hopes that Apex will provide more of these. We've seen the fast-attack-vehicles, which don't have the CROWS turrets, and Apex according to BIS store will:
expand the main game's line-up of more familiar / modern-day armaments, and introduce new vehicle classes, such as VTOL aircraft and Light Strike Vehicles.

Further, here is the description for Tanoa for arma3.com
Situated in the South Pacific, the island province of Tanoa is one of many that, together, compose the Horizon Islands – an independent island nation with historic ties to both East and West. Formerly an outpost belonging to the Empire of Japan, before its liberation by US Marines in 1944, evidence of a long history of conflict and turmoil can still be found dotted across the island – relics from times long-since passed.

Nowadays, Tanoa thrives off rich deposits of rare earth metals exported the world over, but controversy and civil unrest have long surrounded these efforts due to the perceived social, economic and environmental impacts of their exploitation. Tanoa is also believed to be a hub of illicit trafficking in the Pacific, but no formal charges have ever been raised.

In 2035, Tanoa continues to enjoy a prolonged period of apparent peace and prosperity, but the volatile geopolitical situation on the world's stage threatens to destabilize the region, and plunge it into darkness once more.
I am expecting, perhaps foolishly, very low-tech weapons and vehicles from the native factions here based on this theme.

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