loyalguard

In an effort to put everyone at ease, BIS has made some announcement on its ArmA Support and Patching Plans:

The patch fixes are a short list, more wil be added.

ArmA Support And Patching Plans at bistudio.com

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|TG| LoyalGuard

Grunt 70

Good find Loyal...excellent news I'd say.

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|TG-22nd|Grunt



"When force is necessary, it must be applied boldly, decisively, and completely. But one must know the limitations of force; one must know when to blend force with maneuver" - Leon Trotsky

Long Bow

I don't have much experince in the ArmA field but have been around the battlefield series modding community a while. The fact that they are openly admiting to continued support and working at making the moding community happy is huge IMO. If ArmA/ArmA2 was an EA title all we would get was a politically correct "F-off, send more money" statement.

loyalguard

Updates on ArmA2 from BIS today: ARMA 2 Expectations.

Here is a quick summary:

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Taxi

And further:

I must say I'm somewhat disappointed with this list. I know this is by no means a final list, but if these are the kind of priorities they have I don't see much improvement for facilitating easier organization and administration of games nor do I see any planned improvement on decent TvT content. What ArmA really lacks is a decent organizational and admin interface and functionality.

Of the 10 things listed only the increased facial detail (and perhaps enhanced building destruction) may have tactical implications the rest looks pretty unimportant. I hope we'll see more tactical/interface related improvement along the way.

tHa_KhAn

Remember, their view of this product seems to be a framework as opposed to a deep game. The Console version I would imagine as needing more in the way of depth without the help of the mods. However, a console version needs less administration when it comes to multiplayer. I'll agree that even their framework needs some overhauling, but in general they have always provided a place for a niche group to use modding to create an amazing experience. I don't think ArmA 2 will be any different, even though I would guess the console angle will be their focus. What is good for BIS is not always good for us, despite the apparent need for our support.

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Taxi

Yes, I agree. The problem is their niche is tactical and realistic gameplay. They took plenty care of the realism, but the tactical part is more difficult to achieve. Playing tactically is largely dependant on the player base, however you can't expect the average Joe without any military background to organize, give and follow orders just by himself. Even on a tactical server you'll often see unorganized gameplay if certain people are not present or take the lead. To me that's an awful waste of the engine being so realistic with so many tactical options not being used.

I reckon BIS should give admins the option to force people into an organization on their server and enable leaders to deal with people not following orders. I think Shiner has some very good examples of what such functionality might look like. To me the ultimate gameplay would be two organized sides using tactics and the freedom of the map to try and out manoeuvre one another. I can only see this happen on very few servers. I think facilitating/enforcing organized play more strongly would help to enable this level of gameplay on more servers.

Tobruk

I don't know about you guys, but I would expect ARMA 2 to have all the features that VSB2 currently has (less the military mission review tools etc.)

However, based on what I have read in this thread via BIS, ARMA2 sounds more like Opflash Resistance than a true sequal. I believe they said they are not planning to employ a new engine.

Dslyecxi

A "new engine" is a tremendously huge task for a small independent developer. Thinking that that could happen in a ~12-18 month development cycle is comical.

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Tobruk

I think that is why everyone was surprised when BIS announced ARMA 2 so soon after ARMA.

I guess most gamers expect a game that is called "2" to be a completely new effort rather than an expansion.

Similar to what Opflash 2 will be.

BIS's communication on its developments has been a bit inconsistent. I recall when ARMA was first announced they said that it was meant to be a bridge between Opflash and a completely new game. At the time they weren't even calling it ARMA 2. They also posted game screens that were different from those now posted under ARMA 2.

It really seems like ARMA 2 is more of a console refinement of ARMA similar to Opflash elite.

They would do better to call it an expansion.
But whatever, I will buy it in anycase.