I am massively disappointed with Bohemia Interactive

[Polacanthus]

I feel like dropping a few words and see what other people think.

I purchased Arma 3 back in 2015 with all the existing DLC at the time for 29,99€. The performance was horrible. The gameplay clunky. The server selection limited, in case you wanted low latency. Due to the impossible to improve rollercoaster of framerate this game is, I did not touch it for over 2 years.

Now I came back. The various updates seem to have brought zero to no improvement in performance. Most I achieved was after moving it to a SSD: Why does my hardrive make it lag? Dear Bohemia: I got 10 gigs of ram free when running this game: USE IT.

Clunky controls, sometimes horrible animations, stoneage effects and barely acceptable sound quality. In all those years the simulation depth has not improved a bit, ballistics are basic, armor simulation is basic, camera control in vehicles is unbearable (no seat adjustement, low refresh rate and resolution mirrors). Configuring my G920 for driving seems to be impossible too. The AI is a joke.

I could go on about the obvious game, control and menu design flaws that have existed since its release, but now, after coming back to the game, I do so realising I can pay another 52€ to be able to properly play on current servers because they did manage to produce a lot of DLC. They also littered the game with ads for them, annoying me every now and then, giving me NO OPTION to switch that crap off.

Then there is that forced ballte-eye thingy, but that doesn't really concern me, because I have always used it.

I wrote my negative review due to the perfomance issues years ago, of course receiving a lot of beef from fanboys, telling me I was too stupid to set up the game or being just too demanding... all up to debate. The DLC policy and shoving down their ads down my throat is a whole new story though. I would've given a new Arma a chance, but as it seems now Bohemia will end up on the same pile for me as Ubisoft, Activision and EA did a long time ago. They are especially reminding me of Dovetail games, though Bohemia does not releas a absolutely ridiculous amount of DLC, however they also put too little effort in improvement of the engine.

To demand at least 80€ in whole for a barely functional game and forcing ads on paying costumers is inexcusable. IF I had at least seen a huge improvement in performance I'd feel like I am paying for some kind of quality product. Now I regret I ever paid money for this at all.

What I don't understand, that's why I even open a thread about it, why Arma 3's reviews stay that high... normally people point out when companies sell bad products, while milking costumers with overpriced or too numerous DLC, though the base game stays a technical mess.
What's wrong with Arma's fanbase? You are all fine with this? You'd just buy an Arma4 even if it still uses that 90s engine?

It's not that I don't understand how people can still enjoy Arma. I just don't understand why they don't protest...

[CW2 P. Larkins]

I protest all the time. When I play with people in vanilla, and I bring up an issue with the game that BI refuses to fix, everyone's in agreement. If I can be realistic here, if some other game company decided to make a milsim and compete with Arma 3, they would probably do a much better job.

I personally think the only reason this game is so positively reviewed is because the team based experience is indeed good. You can get some really damn good teamwork-based matches from this game and that alone is what makes me play daily/semi daily. The issue is that the game itself is, indeed, horribly lackluster. The game presents you with a half-baked sandbox and the community itself is what makes it so good. Heck, I go back to Arma 2 sometimes only to find that Arma 2 had waaay better DLC and vehicles than Arma 3, and way more content. Though, Ironically, BI is also notorious for it's inability to fix some things in Arma 2.

Arma 3 has been very dissapointing as a game, but the community is solid. I'm just waiting for another game developer to pick up on the need for a well done milsim game and give it a shot. I'll probably not buy Arma 4 either, seeing as there's issues that Arma 3 has that have not been fixed ever since release, which is absolutely disgusting and tells me they'll treat A4 the same way.

[Meowser has not]

Unfortunately I believe people have only stuck around for this sinking ship because at this present moment there is no other sandbox esque milsim to play

[-OrLoK- Слава Україн]

seems to work fine for me. tiny bit of rubberbanding for a few mins.

56 folk on.

[El Berl]

Originally posted by Meowser:

Unfortunately I believe people have only stuck around for this sinking ship because at this present moment there is no other sandbox esque milsim to play

This is absolutely true. Same reason why The Sims is still a thing.

[Wally_c64]

Originally posted by -OrLoK-:

seems to work fine for me.

Same here. Great game, has so much going for it.

[-Easy-]

I gotta say i know the feeling about arma 3 you describe. I had a AMD FX cpu back than i could not get past the 25 fps online.. I renewed my CPU and bam i had a huge improvement 40 -/+ fps so. The thing about arma 3 it's a one of a kind.

Nowhere in any game whatsoever can you have such control over the muppet your playing (hehee ). Also the way arma 3 is made you really got a big ass map on which warfare can be simulated to have some fun. The controls already makes this game a hard one people probably take up to 3-4 months to actually get the controls right and afther that don't forget mods like ACE medical which can take up time aswell.

Also you say the AI is stupid yet arma 3 AI is stupid but somehow one of the better AI's out there the most complex one with morale settings. I've seen all triple A games AI like ghost recon or phantom pain metal gear they all ussually start like this. You get spotted than the start to shoot and the will start to close in and attack. AI arma 3 wil spot you and attack and wil try to flank and if you have it enabled throw grenades and smoke grenades they wil even retreat taking too many casualties but in other triple A games they wil just to kamikaze on you and have no morale at all.

The preformance you are right but you already named the AI right? It is because of the AI the fps drops drastically. Yes it is sometimes OP AI and sometimes DUMB as F AI but still one of the best out there and sadly that takes a whole new level of calculations your CPU has to make..

People want everything to run 60 fps on 4k and want 200+ player servers they want super graphics and ofcourse the gameplay needs to be perfect. Yet i've seen all the games that have super graphics and run 60 fps with lower need of good gameplay and teamwork not nearly achieve the same level as arma 3 does .

Arma 3 aint perfect but thats with every game good graphics games with quality for gameplay tend to be much of the same. It doesn't mather which game every game has it's flaw. But somehow people are okay with it aslong they have 60 fps wits a good game. I don't really agree with that cause there is no game like arma 3 and no company yet in the game industry has taken up the challenge to confront BI with arma because no triple A company cant afford the time and money it needs to make it better than arma 3 has it right now.

Preformance wise yes its crap but what can you expect of a engine thats maybe even older than you. Just be happy we have a game like this. Because i can't wait until the release arma 4 with a better engine and more preformance.

[Muzzleflash]

Originally posted by Polacanthus:

What I don't understand, that's why I even open a thread about it, why Arma 3's reviews stay that high... normally people point out when companies sell bad products, while milking costumers with overpriced or too numerous DLC, though the base game stays a technical mess.

Roughly 1/8 of the reviews are negative. To understand why people reviews stay that high read some of them. In fact in quite many of them the problems you mention are described too. Just glancing at some of the positive reviews the drawbacks they mention include *obscene-word-here* AI, weird gun gameplay (controls), bugs, bad audio. Some mention you need a beefy machine, some that the performance is not that well, and others don't mention performance at all, which would indicate that it did not make the game infeasible to play (else they would not have rated it positively). Some of them even mentions how Bohemia is doing DLCs as a plus. Personally I play in milsim groups using modded content, so I only bought APEX on sale for 15€ for the island.

So people are pointing out the bad aspects of the game, the negative reviews, but also some of the positive reviews. So either it is all a huge conspiracy, or despite its problems, many people somehow found a way to enjoy the game. A common theme among positive reviews is that once you get past or accepted the problems some players have found an unique experience not available elsewhere (at least that they have found). Regardless of the cause, if people generally find the good offset the bad why wouldn't they rate it positive?

Originally posted by Polacanthus:

What's wrong with Arma's fanbase? You are all fine with this? You'd just buy an Arma4 even if it still uses that 90s engine?

It's not that I don't understand how people can still enjoy Arma. I just don't understand why they don't protest...

- I don't think I have talked to anyone who doesn't think performance is bad. However, for many it was not bad enough they could not have a good time.
- About DLC, most I know do find the price for DLCs a bit too high, but still found them enjoyable (personally I see little value in the DLCs).
- About AI, yeah that is pretty bad. I can open the editor on Altis, place 3 vehicles, ask them to move halfway across, and one would get stuck on a slope, not moving forward or backwards but tracks still animating. The other will get stuck halfway to its destination. And the third might arrive only slightly damaged. It wasn't until I found a group with a completely custom AI I actually enjoyed playing against the AI. And while the crappy vanilla AI has ruined my experience many times, there has been other times where I still managed to have a good time.
- Animations have never been Bohemia's strong suit. Still remember the earlier games, where if you killed a guy about to raise binoculars: he would raise binoculars, then lower them again, and then finally die. Same thing with RPGs back then. That part didn't exactly add to the impression of a AAA game.

People do protest. I protest - to anyone who would listen - verbally. In what manner would you have me protest? By the time I would know the problems, it is too late for refund. Should I barf vitrol on social media?

[Polacanthus]

I am in a strong dilemma here. As pointed out by many Arma is the closest you can get too a full blood warfare "simulator". I also do enjoy playing Arma. I made it past 100 hours but propably a couple dozen hours went into desperate attempts to tweak performance with barely noticeable success.

The biggest turn off for me right now is the forced implementation of DLC content into my game that I can't deactivate, so I have to scroll through tons of content I don't own when sanboxing. Vehicles in the garage are not even easily distinguishable if you do not have the overview of already owned content. Same of course weakens the online experience massively. Sure I appreciate the circumstance to be able to still join severs which are using not purchased content... still with obvious limitations of course. That this hunts me down to the singleplayer/sandbox/Zeus experience though is highly frustrating.

I am not in favor of spamming social media or forums with rude forms of protest. I still do not understand why people cheer over the game existing, giving in to questionable DLC/business policy while the (feature) update behaviour leaves so many broadly desired changes and improvements absolutely ignored. My dilemma is exactly that. I want Arma to be good. I want to play it. I want to enjoy it yet I feel disrespected as customer to some extent. I'd willfully purchase another 50 bucks worth of DLC if that would go hanf in hand with some core improvements.

Then again I am aware that optimisation is a very complex thing to do but seeing the success of this game, the countless copies sold + the DLC I'd guess they must've made so much money that deep engine maintenance should be more than affordable.

But no. The change they make to the game is to rub their new DLC content into my face at any opportunity. If I could I'd write a 2nd negative review for that.

I am looking forward to more performance once I upgrade my CPU yet I already know it will be only around satisfactory. Buying DLC though seems like applauding work they are obviously avoiding or just incapable of. Work that was actually immanent for the entire existence of this engine but at least for 5 years Arma 3 has been out.

I might arrange myself with performance issues but to spice it with typical greedy DLC (ad) policy is a middle finger right into anyone's face who buys shooters expecting an at least smooth experience.

Yes. Sadly Arma has no real alternatives and it seems Bohemian is making full financial use of this advantage.

[Roadkill]

Considering they are no big AAA dev they are doing fine. Yes the engine is bad really bad for what it wants to achieve. But rarely any game offers something like ARMA 3.
I love this game but if next one suffers the same issues I don't think I'm gonna buy it.

But I think they will do much better job with ARMA 4.

[El Berl]

Originally posted by Roadkill:

Considering they are no big AAA dev they are doing fine. Yes the engine is bad really bad for what it wants to achieve. But rarely any game offers something like ARMA 3.
I love this game but if next one suffers the same issues I don't think I'm gonna buy it.

But I think they will do much better job with ARMA 4.

All they literally need to do is provide us a base with great performance. Modders will do the rest.

[Polacanthus]

Originally posted by V. Berlioz:

All they literally need to do is provide us a base with great performance. Modders will do the rest.

Exactly. For that I'd willfully pay 40-50€.

[BoogieMan]

Indeed, they get away with it because they don't have any notable competition.

Some day that will change, and then we'll see if they have what it takes.


I'm not meaning to sound like I'm just bashing the game, it does a lot of stuff fairly well and does team stuff better than most (but still not without flaws) But it's undeniable that it is clunky and has notable performance issues that haven't improved much since the game was released even while all our PCs have gotten better.

Additionally, the recommend specs for this game on the Steam store are a joke. You can utterly destroy those specs and still have performance issues. I guess they "recommend" you set the settings so low the game looks 10 years older than it is.


It also makes one wonder why the majority of the content that is the most fun is almost always made by modders.

[El Berl]

"It also makes one wonder why the majority of the content that is the most fun is almost always made by modders."

Bohemia has no balls. Modders do. Modders are not afraid to go beyond the "norm", and often mods are best defined by how far they go out of that norm.

[El Berl]

"armor simulation is basic"

100% accurate.

[Varis]

A3 was designed as a platform thus much of the content was expected from the community. And the modding community is extremely strong.

Besides the interesting and unique mode of operation, the feeling of authenticy and the extensive list of features are selling points for me.