Arma 2

[Vreki]

Re: Arma 2

I will have to retract my statement made earlier about the voice acting. Some of it is bad but alot of is not, now that I am playing the retail game. So far I am having fun with it. Sometimes the enemy AI does suck though. It takes your eyes a few seconds to adjust when yo put on the night vision goggles and also when you take them off.

I havent touched singleplayer since the 10 minutes I spent on it in the demo, so the voice acting doesnt bother me. Well, it was pretty annoying in bootcamp too, but thats also in the past now.

Anyway, having played the full version for a while, I am now ready to recommend it. Especially to those who have grown tired of the run-and-gun style of COD.

[JoMaMaz]

Re: Arma 2

I havent touched singleplayer since the 10 minutes I spent on it in the demo, so the voice acting doesnt bother me. Well, it was pretty annoying in bootcamp too, but thats also in the past now.

Anyway, having played the full version for a while, I am now ready to recommend it. Especially to those who have grown tired of the run-and-gun style of COD.

I am somewhat in that position. Granted, I still love CoD and you can find servers that do not have the massive, full-server, RnG crap, but I want to like ArmA and it seems people do end up liking it such as yourself. BUT, I wonder if I have the time to put into it to learn this game and enjoy it. I have some Fifa 09 I'm playing (never bought it, got it for $20 recently, practicing up for Fifa 10), I just bought Fight Night Round 4 and it's AMAZING, and I still need to beat HL2 Episode 1 and 2 as I bought the Orange Box when they had that amazing 66% off deal and I've only beat Portal so far (very creative, awesome game imo). And of course, there is the RL which has it's busy nature as well.

How many hours, if you use xfire say, has it taken to get the hang of things/have fun? Plus, it seems a lot of Euros play this game, but not has many Americans. Am I correct/incorrect about that?

[Vreki]

Re: Arma 2

How many hours, if you use xfire say, has it taken to get the hang of things/have fun? Plus, it seems a lot of Euros play this game, but not has many Americans. Am I correct/incorrect about that?

You will quickly get the hang of movement and vehicles, thats not much more complicated than other games. Avoiding getting shot is a different story, but it is doable

The real problem is that almost all content, including game modes, are user created so you are not likely to find any documentation.
That means that learning a new game mode can be a frustrating experience where you are unable to locate the enemy.On top of that there are the occasional bug in the missions so there may not be any enemies at all.

But if you find a populated server and follow the rest of the players, then you can be having fun almost from the start, and after 5-10 hours you will also know what you are doing.

The most important thing is not to give up the first time you spawn in the middle of nowhere on a almost empty server, filled with people even more clueless than yourself.

As for the US/EU issue, the game was released much earlier in some parts of EU, so they have a head start.
From wiki:

Release date(s)
CZ June 17, 2009[1]
EU June 19, 2009[2]
Steam June 26, 2009[3]
NA July 7, 2009[4]
[5]
AU August 20, 2009[5]

[Rambo]

Re: Arma 2

having played arma 1 the controls can be learned quick and the commands/vehicle operations in training mode also.But arma 1 wasnt as smooth as ive seen arma 2 clips.

Im really liking the look of this game and await a release here:thumbsup:

[[29ID]B|Pvt.Mickd]

Re: Arma 2

Also a question for those that know about the mission editing. Could I make a mission with opposing snipers and the object of the mission is to see which sniper can take out the target first?

You can. You need to create 2 snipers at given locations. Create way points for them like they are walking towards eachother. Once they spot eachother they should engage.

Dont expect to just put them on the map and start blasting away at eachother. They will probably do it if they are close together but not at range.

The real problem is that almost all content, including game modes, are user created so you are not likely to find any documentation.

That means that learning a new game mode can be a frustrating experience where you are unable to locate the enemy.On top of that there are the occasional bug in the missions so there may not be any enemies at all.

But if you find a populated server and follow the rest of the players, then you can be having fun almost from the start, and after 5-10 hours you will also know what you are doing.

The most important thing is not to give up the first time you spawn in the middle of nowhere on a almost empty server, filled with people even more clueless than yourself.

Vreki speaks a lot of common sense here and his experience is one that probably mirrors all new players to the series. You simply cannot give up at the first attempt. They should write it on the box to be fair.

He is also correct in that the vast vast vast majority of missions are user made. We have a game more called Search & Destroy which is a public version of our tournament map. We havent put any explaination of how the system works so unsurprisingly guys dont know what the hell they are doing. Its not their fault, its our for not using the facilities in the editor to put it in the mission.

Usually if you type in side chat 'can someone give me a quick run down of the objectives' they will type it back though. If they dont keep spamming it and someone will tell you, usually they are pretty good about it though. Better than this, is the communities/groups/clans. Most advertise their Teamspeak address in the scrolling information and it is strongly encouraged you join the ts for that server. Not only will you be much much much more likely to get useful help, the gameplay increases 10 fold. The upside of this is that you will probably find a server which suits your tastes after a week or two. The you just come back to that server and theres a high chance the same people be it public or otherwise on that server.

Most servers use Voice Over Network (VON) which is nice. Our server doesnt use it as we use teamspeak. We always try and get atleast 25-50% of the public players in our TS to help them better enjoy the game.

[stilla-killa]

Re: Arma 2

I played the game last night from about 6pm to about 10:30pm and now I can't stop thinking about it lol. Maybe its the slower pace that is appealing to me right now as the last ones I played were COD4 and BF2 which were more fast paced. Granted I didn't really know what I was doing when I went into a multiplayer game but i still had fun.

[JoMaMaz]

Re: Arma 2

My Bday is coming up and I still do not have a concrete gift idea, but this game is an option. Maybe I can try getting on a demo server that is advertising a TS and hop on that. Not giving up just yet. :thumbsup:

[Rambo]

Re: Arma 2

on some arma1 servers i could spawn right at the battle or jump from a plane into action.

Or get a chopper load it up and fly into battle:salute:,Its just knowing where the action is thats the secret.

[stilla-killa]

Re: Arma 2

What gets me is when going into certain servers that you can't drive the vehicles unless you are a certain rank. And then you are either stuck at the main base waiting for a ride or head out on foot which would take forever to get to the objective. That is unless I am doing it all wrong.

[Vreki]

Re: Arma 2

What gets me is when going into certain servers that you can't drive the vehicles unless you are a certain rank. And then you are either stuck at the main base waiting for a ride or head out on foot which would take forever to get to the objective. That is unless I am doing it all wrong.

You are doing it all wrong
It sounds like you are playing evolution, in which case there will be two flagpoles at you base. One allows you to spawn at the Mobile HQ, that is usually the preferable option. But it may be destroyed, or left at the base.

The other flag pole allows you do to a HALO, a high attitude parachute drop.
You can easily freefall to anywhere on the map, activate your parachute when you are between 200 and 300 meters up. Remember that then enemy will shoot you in the parachute if you get too close.

Other game modes may have flag poles too, but if you are playing one of those without, you will just have to ask the other players how to get around.

[Rambo]

Re: Arma 2

Ok my first impressions of the demo i DL today.

I own Arma1 and this feels like Arma1:cry:,I dont see any major changes yet:shakehead:

Same engine?

[Vreki]

Re: Arma 2

I just game across this thread in the official forums: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=75027
It contains al ink to a pdf map of the entire region used in ARMA II http://downloads.game.co.uk/game.co....ARMAII_MAP.pdf
Its 45 MB, you might want to use "save link as".

And a question: How do you repair wrecked vehicles as an Engineer?
I spent half an hour yesterday retreiving a wreck with a chopper, but no matter where I dumped it in the home base, nothing happened, And there was no repair option when I approached it on foot, or by a repair truck.
How does Arma II Engineers work?

[KC-10]

Re: Arma 2

Same engine?

And, what is the problem with that? It is a derivative of the original engine they created years ago - but it does the job adequately. I think you do not understand what is necessary to create a new engine, and I think you do not understand what a new engine would mean for the game.

Sure, the engine has its drawbacks. No rivers. No walking inside vehicles. Etc. But to criticise them for using the same engine? C'mon mate.

Its not as easy as saying "Oh, I think the next installment should have a new engine."

But this engine does an adequate job. Had they chosen to develop a new engine, the title may have arrived in 2012 at the earliest...

Its like the people who complain about MW2 not having a new engine - why exactly does it need a new engine? The engine in CoD 4 did a perfect job, MW2 just needs a few reworks to handle whatever new features they are implementing...vehicles...and possibly refinement to handle more xmodels, but that is it. A new engine does not mean the game instantly becomes better.

Vreki, the engineer class by default cannot repair vehicles (and I'd rather it stays that way, except for replacing lost tyres on a HMMWV or LAV perhaps). I'm not sure how to help you salvage vehicles - that is a mission specific thing.

[stilla-killa]

Re: Arma 2

You are doing it all wrong
It sounds like you are playing evolution, in which case there will be two flagpoles at you base. One allows you to spawn at the Mobile HQ, that is usually the preferable option. But it may be destroyed, or left at the base.

The other flag pole allows you do to a HALO, a high attitude parachute drop.
You can easily freefall to anywhere on the map, activate your parachute when you are between 200 and 300 meters up. Remember that then enemy will shoot you in the parachute if you get too close.

Other game modes may have flag poles too, but if you are playing one of those without, you will just have to ask the other players how to get around.

The thing is it didn't give me an option of where to spawn. It spawned me right at the main base. I think I am going to come back to it once more patches are released. To buggy for me right now.

[Vreki]

Re: Arma 2

The thing is it didn't give me an option of where to spawn. It spawned me right at the main base. I think I am going to come back to it once more patches are released. To buggy for me right now.

Thats probably because the mobile spawn is still at the base.