Sabre_Tooth_Tigger

If they had 100 player battles I'd buy Arma, what is the maximum number of players in theory?

Check out this neat video I found, it plays full screen HD



I would like to see a similar video of similar quality done for PR but it needs to be recorded in 1280x720. I dont have a widescreen so I dont think I can just force it unfortunately


Arma 2 is out soon?

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fuzzhead

max number i think is around 80 so far, i know you can get up to 100 but i know they had ALOT of problems with that many..

Ive been on with around 60 and there was no major issues..

Keep in mind though this is in a passworded server, controlled environment. Most pubs rarely go over 50...

Grunt 70

Good post...I'll have to digest Fuzz's OP a little bit more but I wanted to add that ARMA shines spectacularly when game sessions are preplanned and thought out ahead of time. Open Arma servers will always have lone wolfers but you'll never find that in a tightly run organized gaming session.

Now--finding those tightly run organized gaming sessions is the key. TG runs them weekly (See the stickies) and one or two other gaming communities do too...notably SIM HQ and ShackTac. ShackTac, by the way, runs regularly scheduled player vs. player events that regularly top out with 50-60 players. This is not an open event however, players must be part of the ShackTac community to participate.

This is not PR...nor will ever be PR...the comparison is almost unfair as they are really apples and oranges, to coin a cliche. PR is a game, albeit based in reality as much as it's engine will allow. ARMA is really not a game...it's a simulation and this is the most important thing to understand before jumping in and trying it out. If the difference of those is lost on you no matter what I say you just won't get it.

It's alot easier to just jump in to a PR session, become part of an organized squad and battle away...but PR is fairly straight forward and predictable in as much as it's always about either defending a flag or attacking a flag until the points run out. ARMA is much more dynamic than that...it relies on the players (and the modding community) themselves to define and dictate the action...

I love them both and play them both for different reasons....I'll tell you this...I've never had more immersive experiences in a gaming session then while playing ARMA. I mean hair raising combat that gets you jacked up and high on drama...Go and read some of the TG after action reports...you'll see what I mean...

eg...the other day we were on a mission that involved driving through a high mountain pass..beautiful scenery, wonderfully rendered, ..out of the blue I said to the team, " I love this road"....just like I would if it were real life....now that's a bad example to highlight combat of course, but my point is that this is something you'd say in real life...I've never said that about any road in BF2 or PR.

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|TG-X| 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

Redd_Wiggler

i dl'd the demo yesterday, and tried the first SP mission and i HATED it. please tell me the MP is WAAAAAAAY better. :/

the voice commands from my SL(?) were aweful and sounded something like this:
"rifle!MAN! at NORTHeast. SHOOT!thatMAN" thats the best way to describe how it sounded (i think).

i also didn't care for the HUD, and the bouncy screen when walking.
i found the controlls a bit complicated and hard to re-bind, but i am sure if i spent a bit more time on that it would be fine.

i never even saw any enemies.

i see lots of mention of patches fixing the game...is his true?

if i DL it on steam, i imagine i will have to keep steam running in the background and can i afford the CPU power to do that (see sys specs below)? how about D2D (i never used that, tho i have used steam for a few games)

i saw somewhere its not optimized for dual core...is this true?

thanx in advance

sys specs:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4200+ (2.21 GHz)
2.0 GB ram
Nvidia GeForce 8600 GT
Realtek HD internal audio bus (so...NOT a soundcard?)

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Elwenil

Yes, the demo is horrible I am told and I know from personal experience that the single player is not really worth a lot of time. It's buggy and frustratingly hard. The online play in much, much better. There are mods to turn off all the annoying shouted commands since we don't use them normally anyway. The headbob may have an option to turn it off like some games do. I don't know if ArmA does, but either way it's realistic and easy to get used to. The controls are a pain, but once you get them setup to suit you, it's no big deal. I personally didn't like being able to turn my veiw and not my body as with other FPS games, so I turned the freelook down to zero.

The basic game will need to be patched to 1.08, then you need to install the 1.11 Beta patch. It fixes the in game comms system and allows dual core processors to run the game properly. I don't know about Steam as I refuse to use it, but I got ArmA from Direct2Drive and had no problems. They are a part of the whole Fileplanet, IGN, GameSpy group and D2D uses the Fileplanet downloader, so it's trustworthy and works great. I've bought over a dozen games from them. You can also get ArmA from the Atari website. Hope this helps.

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|TG|Elwenil

loyalguard

If anyone has any questions about ArmA please feel free to post them in the ArmA forum and we will be happy to oblige.

As a former PR player I will just add to what has been said above. It is hard to directly compare PR and ArmA. I loved PR and think it is a revolutionary mod and greatly improved the overall BF2 experience. If it wasn't for PR I would have given up on BF2 6-9 months earlier. ArmA for me completes the "simulation" aspect I was looking for hoever. If you are looking for a quality military game then PR is a great choice. If you are looking for a military simulation I would recommend ArmA.

I will concur with this on a personal basis. There are many ArmA players that are into the vanilla campaign and related gameplay but I never player more than 5 minutes of it. Custom MP Coop and TvT missions are the way to go with this game. Even though the game is a shell, which can be a con, IMO it is its greatest feature. You can do practically anything with this game! I am heaviliy involved in the ArmA editing community and am amazed with the modability of ArmA and what you can create with it.

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|TG| LoyalGuard

Redd_Wiggler

well...sunday is my b-day, and i have the ok from the CO (my wife ) to get it...so i will be dl-ing it today...from either steam or d2d (which i havent tried yet....)

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Switch

I left PR for several months to play ARMA... At first I really liked the potential of the game but eventually I got sick of the instability, poor performance, and the amount of time spent 'organizing' over the time spent 'playing' and having fun. Even in-mission its a pain just getting the right people in the right places. I suppose the now functional ingame VOIP will improve this, but a few months ago when I was playing we had to use TS and there was no way of matching a voice to an in game character. 1.11 may be what ARMA needs to make it stable and perform near adequately for most users but the game should not have been released until it was where it is now.

The game can be great if you plan events in advanced and set up sqds and mission precisely. ARMA really needs organization to make it worth while. Leaving a server running for people to come and go in the middle of missions is not really suitable for what most are looking for out of ARMA. Moreover the large scale PvP events have only been successful with heavily moded versions of ARMA designed to accommodate such things --- while the game designers claimed that this is what the game was all about from the beginning.
ARMA has yet to make this happen with any sort of consistency and never off of a 'stock' copy of arma.

After a few months of fun and frustration (mostly frustration) with ARMA I went back to PR and found .7 -- when I had left it was .5. PR has developed nicely, its much better for those people with less time to spend who are looking for insta-fun.

ARMA will require some serious commitment as there are no quick games and the learning curve is steep. Will it be worth while when all the wrinkles are ironed out? Definitely. Has it been worth while so far? Not really.

This new cheap steam release is going to give ARMA the chance to develop into a more popular game, so now is the best time to plunge in if you're up to the challenge and willing to face potential disappointment if arma rendering performance isn't what you're used to.

Lastly the crooked ArmA logo annoys me and is emblematic of how they paid so much attention to minor details and completely overlooked many obvious flaws.
[img=http://img524.imageshack.us/img524/7382/crookedarmaon6.th.png]

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|TG|Switch

Better known as:
That noob who crashed the chopper.
That noob who ran over the mine.
That noob who TK'd me with a sniper rifle.
That noob who hit that APC at 300m with light AT! Our APC...

thegreatnardini

I seriously doubt the logo designers have much of anything to do with game mechanics...


I like arma, it's a great game. It is not, however, a game I can pick up and play daily like PR. It's just too slow and draining. Think commanding on PR is draining, try playing with Dirtboy and a few other guys on the same mission over and over again because every time we try to blow some stupid tower and we die . I'm trying to make it a point to play arma more, but the times I do want to play I haven't seen people on TS. I'll try to hop on next Saturday if anyone wants to join me.

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lTG-6thl TheGreatNardini

Elwenil

Be aware that with the 1.11 patch and the fixing of the in game comms, very few people bother to join TS when playing ArmA.

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|TG|Elwenil

Switch

emblematic -- i know they aren't the game designers.

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|TG|Switch

Better known as:
That noob who crashed the chopper.
That noob who ran over the mine.
That noob who TK'd me with a sniper rifle.
That noob who hit that APC at 300m with light AT! Our APC...

Elwenil

Just a note, there is a new patch released today. For those interested, make sure you download the 1.12 Beta patch. Check in the ArmA forum to see when the server gets updated.

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|TG|Elwenil

draeh

Is ArmA still people versus bots?

That's the part that I did not enjoy when ArmA first came out.

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Ikariam (Alpha)
Toruos[44:84]>Non Sequitur(c)-Sulfur :: Nyyos[44:85]>Obesa Cantavit-Wine
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Elwenil

It's both. It would be hard to have a structured mission against other players since they would abandon their posts while guarding against some attack that they have no clue when will happen. The TvT does happen, but I have not had a chance to play any yet.

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|TG|Elwenil

Sabre_Tooth_Tigger

Ive never played but on footage Ive watched the amount of radio spam seemed irritating. Reminds me of an old bf2 game where the commander somehow spots 'enemy infantry' 30 times every minute
Radio silence and just listening to the environmental sounds and background gunfire, etc is one of the most underestimated parts of PR I think, does that happen in arma

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