Arma 3 campaign is no good.

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Well, I finished the campaign, and I have to say, it was NOT an enjoyable experience.

Campared to Arma 2, the campaign is atleast playable, so I was actually excited to see Arma 3 have functioning scripts (Though thats an awefully sad thing to be happy about.)

The bulk of the issue is the terrible AI and command system, I have complained about it before. In SP though, it is crucial to have fully functioning AI, espeically in a campaign.

The AI always seem to get themselfs killed or they wont listen to orders. Even with mods like VCom or C2 I couldn't get the AIs act together. Also, friendly units out of my squad never tell me where they found tanks and such. So when they moved through and area I would assume an area was clear and when I move in, I would get hit by a tank or something stupid..

The campaign itself though, suffers from an assortment of bad AI and shady scripting to say the least. I have had missions where I would call artillery but the shells would never arrive. He would say "Splash out." then total silence... The shells didnt even show up after I killed everyone...

Or an objective would hang and take a while to complete, or fail to ever complete entirely... In the side mission named Fait Accompli, I had taken out all the AT positions and killed everyone... The objective wouldn't complete though, even though the tanks were free moving around to their next objective.

Also too there was one mission I completed, and right when I was in the next mission planning screen, I backed out to make dinner. Came back, and my progress reverted to the previous mission with all my saves removed! Luckily BI allowed people to cheat skip missions and still earn achievements, though the main campaign shouldn't be that much of a after thought.

I have tried turning mods on and off to fix issues, but the 2 mods (VCom 3, C2) are never the issue, even so, they are mods to add something that should already be in game.

All in all, the campaign after I completed it, I didn't feel like I accomplished anything. Every game I play, even other games that aggravate me like Dark Souls, makes me feel great when I beat it.

This game though just annoyed me to the point I stopped caring... I flew through the last few missions rolling my eyes at the issues, then just hit the end credits, killed myself at the finale sequence and ended the game...

Just left this bad taste in my mouth afterward.

I really hope for Arma 4 I finally get to play a very smooth and well made SP experience. This game improved a immeasurably on Arma 2's unplayableness in SP, but it just isn't there yet.

I still have faith in BI for the next title though! I hope to see missions with well made scripts and AI in the future.

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That also brings up another topic to go with this.

I have been hearing rumors of BI making a brand new game engine. I only wonder if it will be powerful and capable of filling Arma 3's short commings.

[El Berl]

Enfusion is their new engine that will apparently power A4.

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Originally posted by V. Berlioz:

Enfusion is their new engine that will apparently power A4.

It sounds fancy, did they say anything specific about it? I did some digging and I heard DayZ moved to it, and that it does have an improved scripting system which sounds exciting.

Correct if I am wrong, but from what I have read, Arma 3 still uses the same engine as Arma 2, with some improvements. I take it that the old engine carries around some dated flaws that is still present in Arma 3, bad AI and some rendering issues as well.

[El Berl]

Originally posted by Wilbur Cobb:

Originally posted by V. Berlioz:

Enfusion is their new engine that will apparently power A4.

It sounds fancy, did they say anything specific about it? I did some digging and I heard DayZ moved to it, and that it does have an improved scripting system which sounds exciting.

Correct if I am wrong, but from what I have read, Arma 3 still uses the same engine as Arma 2, with some improvements. I take it that the old engine carries around some dated flaws that is still present in Arma 3, bad AI and some rendering issues as well.

Yeah, A3 and A2 use the same engine and have legacy issues. The primary problem with our AI of course is the fact that they don't have any on-staff AI developers at Bohemia and have not for years.

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Originally posted by V. Berlioz:

Yeah, A3 and A2 use the same engine and have legacy issues. The primary problem with our AI of course is the fact that they don't have any on-staff AI developers at Bohemia and have not for years.

Ouch... Guess thats why the AI has always been a huge thorn on the side of Arma....

With the growing popularity of AI, and the great leaps in AI technology that have been happening over the past few years, BI should really step up their AI game. They need a small specialized team for it, otherwise I don't think Arma will ever have a great SP experience, since so much is dependent upon it.

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Also, this is probably the least of my complaints, but that ending to the East Wind was so anticlimactic!


Well, atleast the one where you go get the truck. All you do is kill like 5 guys, and just drive the truck a little ways to a ruin. Then Miller tells you to piss off, then you die... The end!

[GOTOPOST]

Originally posted by Wilbur Cobb:

Also, this is probably the least of my complaints, but that ending to the East Wind was so anticlimactic!


Well, atleast the one where you go get the truck. All you do is kill like 5 guys, and just drive the truck a little ways to a ruin. Then Miller tells you to piss off, then you die... The end!

Play this campaign, the campaigns for Operation Flashpoint Cold War Crisis was 100 times better than any of the later games. Arma 1 was ok, After that the campaigns really went downhill.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=857463749

[Nonoche]

Arma 2 campaign is not playable, there's a bug at the end of the first mission where you need to mark target, never finished it, even after like 5 years it wasn't fixed.

[Nick Nape'em]

i dont mind the campaign i actually enjoyed it and i like kerry as a character, because he dosent act like a badass super soldier hes just a guy (whos probelly a conscript) who is thrown into dangerous situations and hates it completely. hes probelly the most realistic soldier ive seen in a game but enough about kerry. about the cannon ending though i dont think the AAF would have done the whole 'to the last man' thing, im pretty sure they are not fanatical, it was surrender or die and well they chose the former. i still dont know why the AAF attacked NATO in the begining, i mean come on they where about to leave the country

[Khaki Bastard №2]

Dimullaney5 play the scenarios and showcases. Also i really recommand Laws of War and Apex. Lastly- the AAF do surrender eventually. What you must remember is that they are technically War Criminals by this point. And are in a lot of trouble, live or die.

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Originally posted by Nonoche:

Arma 2 campaign is not playable, there's a bug at the end of the first mission where you need to mark target, never finished it, even after like 5 years it wasn't fixed.

I know, though I did finish Arma 2's main campaign, it took so much grinding, googling, and work arounds, and I ended up skipping the final warfare mode sequence due to save corruption.

OA though.... There wasn't any amount of trouble shooting to save that campaign! Every single mission broke till my save finally got corrupted.... Then I just uninstalled everything Arma 2, and decided to try Arma 3's campagin... Which was surprisingly playable, just really janky and rough around the edges.

Originally posted by dimullaney5:

i dont mind the campaign i actually enjoyed it and i like kerry as a character, because he dosent act like a badass super soldier hes just a guy (whos probelly a conscript) who is thrown into dangerous situations and hates it completely. hes probelly the most realistic soldier ive seen in a game but enough about kerry. about the cannon ending though i dont think the AAF would have done the whole 'to the last man' thing, im pretty sure they are not fanatical, it was surrender or die and well they chose the former. i still dont know why the AAF attacked NATO in the begining, i mean come on they where about to leave the country

I actually thought Kerry was a fairly practical character too, his atitude toward his situation was believable.

As far as the AAF goes, with their war crimes and such, their best bet was probably to side with CSAT. It's not like CSAT wasn't right there supporting them. I remember fighting CSAT troops at the start of the conflict.

[Gumbo Slice]

Originally posted by GOTOPOST:

Play this campaign, the campaigns for Operation Flashpoint Cold War Crisis was 100 times better than any of the later games. Arma 1 was ok, After that the campaigns really went downhill.

I actually have everything Arma.... That includes the original Cold War Crisis. I might play it some day.... For now though, BI needs to stop stepping backwards on big things like campaigns. I think Arma 3 has solid gameplay, its just the AI and SP experience that is totally ruined.

[Captain n00by]

Originally posted by V. Berlioz:

Yeah, A3 and A2 use the same engine and have legacy issues.

"Same engine" is a really general statement - are Unreal Engine 4 and Unreal Engine 3 "the same engines" ?

I often see this talk how "Call of Duty XXX Warfare still uses Quake 3 engine" - well, no, while the base code may be derived from Quake 3 (RTCW actually, id Tech 3), the amount of updates there was in all this time makes it hard to call it "the same engine".

The progress from the first version of Real Virtuality (back then called "Poseidon") to the current one (RV4) is as big as the progression from the first Unreal Engine to the latest one.

Same case with many other popular or known game engines out there that are in use for a long time.

Originally posted by Wilbur Cobb:

With the growing popularity of AI, and the great leaps in AI technology that have been happening over the past few years

Bull.

The only type of games that actually advance game AI are strategy and simulation games, but in mainstream "AAA" action games, the AI is barely advancing or even making steps backwards.

If I think of "good AI in a FPS game" I think back to F.E.A.R. from 2005, which was more than 10 years ago.

I've said this before and I'll say it again - for the amount of flak the AI in ArmA is getting, it's actually one of the most advanced AIs around in open world shooter/sim games.

If it fails in many situations, that simply means that creating a trully convincing AI is next to impossible, unless events are faked via intensive scripting which is what the vast majority of games out there use.

[Twan]

But hearing Kerry constantly tell his superiors "WITH RESPECT, **** YOU!" never gets old :D

"He's a little unorthodox BUT DAMNIT HE GETS RESULTS!"

[Gumbo Slice]

Originally posted by noobean:

"Same engine" is a really general statement - are Unreal Engine 4 and Unreal Engine 3 "the same engines" ?

I often see this talk how "Call of Duty XXX Warfare still uses Quake 3 engine" - well, no, while the base code may be derived from Quake 3 (RTCW actually, id Tech 3), the amount of updates there was in all this time makes it hard to call it "the same engine".

The progress from the first version of Real Virtuality (back then called "Poseidon") to the current one (RV4) is as big as the progression from the first Unreal Engine to the latest one.

Same case with many other popular or known game engines out there that are in use for a long time.

To answer your first question. Yes in the since that UE4 still supports legacy features for the most part, but it also depends on how much they added and changed. UE4 did add a lot of new features and revised others to be more modern, so of course there are clear differences. That doesn't make it a brand new engine though.

Obviously, there is gonna be a huge difference from the first version of RV to RV4... Like the differences between Golden Source, and Source Engine.

With Arma 3 though, still uses the dated AI, and the old scripting engine. The graphics changes and improved mobility was a huge plus, but overall, its still has some issues Arma 2 had.

Originally posted by noobean:

Originally posted by Wilbur Cobb:

With the growing popularity of AI, and the great leaps in AI technology that have been happening over the past few years

Bull.

The only type of games that actually advance game AI are strategy and simulation games, but in mainstream "AAA" action games, the AI is barely advancing or even making steps backwards.

If I think of "good AI in a FPS game" I think back to F.E.A.R. from 2005, which was more than 10 years ago.

I've said this before and I'll say it again - for the amount of flak the AI in ArmA is getting, it's actually one of the most advanced AIs around in open world shooter/sim games.

If it fails in many situations, that simply means that creating a trully convincing AI is next to impossible, unless events are faked via intensive scripting which is what the vast majority of games out there use.

Have you been in the news lately???

Its not just game AI... Self driving cars are right around the corner, and NVIDIA has been finding ways to implement mechine AI into graphics cards... Thats why they have been working on the experiemental things like textures resolution prediction, and real time ray tracing for photo realistic images...

Or Google's AI that can litterally write its own AI programs. I am not kidding... Look it up...

As far as games go, there was one team of programmers who implemented learning AI into Battlefield... Either 3 or 4... Anyways, its experimental, but with steady advancement of AI its gonna surge through games as well some day. I like to think it may be some day soon!