MadDogX/Sandbox – User

Personal wish list for ARMA 2 or a future ARMA game

Object Oriented scripting

In addition to SQF, give us the ability to create object oriented scripts with a new set of OOP specific commands.

Weapon handling

Treat all weapons as objects and magazines as objects with their own attributes and methods, including the ability to add custom attributes and methods. When a weapon or magazine is dropped and picked up by someone else, it would of course keep any assigned attributes.

WIP forum thread - "Viability of a paid beta"

First off, just to summarize the whole post: this thread is about discussing the viability of

1.) Background

So let's look back a few years. Arma 2 was released in the summer of 2009, so this time two years ago most of us were eagerly looking forward to the release day. Particulary, I think most of us were hoping for a smoother and less buggy release than the one that plagued ArmA in 2006.

Now your mileage may vary, but looking back at Arma2's first few weeks I would say that it was a much better opening than that of its predecessor, but still not a great one. Players and reviewers alike complained about the game being put out in what felt like an "unfinished state". Having attempted to play the Harvest Red campaign in coop with a few friends and ultimately giving up, I can't say I could entirely disagree at the time.

But for those of us who have been around since OFP it's not so bad, right? We all know that BIS are dedicated to fixing their games, and Arma2 has definitely come a long way in the mean time. The trouble is, not everyone is willing to stick around that long, and many new guys - including the friends I tried to play the campaign with - were put off by the bugs and lack of polish of the initial release. Now I know that a portion of the core fan base doesn't care about that. We've got our game, BIS is still around supporting and improving it and just generally being awesome, and the quality of the community is inversely proportional to its size anyway, right?

2.) The Problem

The issue I see is that we all want BIS to stick around in games industry, making more awesome games for us as long as we're mentally fit enough to play them. But in order to do that, their games also need to be successful, selling well to keep the company afloat. Among other things, this means putting a product on the market that can clear the bar of objective quality set by reviewers and players, i.e. reducing the number of glaring bugs to a bare minimum and having all basic features (including the campaign) in working order.

Unfortunately for BIS, they are faced with two compounding problems in this respect:

1. A game as open and complex as Arma2 is much more difficult to debug than your average corridor shooter. 2. BIS is a relatively small game studio and can afford neither a huge QA team nor long release delays.

As a result, great games like Arma2 hit the market prematurely, putting off potential customers due to mediocre reviews. As the saying goes: you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Games simply aren't judged by what they might be in two years time.

TL/DR: Game development costs money. QA costs even more money. BIS is an indie developer, i.e. not much money.

3.) My Suggestion

As explained above, the root of the problem appears to be that BIS is creating an extraordinarily complex game on comparatively limited funds.

Budget / Complexity = Quality*

(*: By quality I mean objective quality, e.g. polish.)

At first glance, it seems like there are only two solutions to this equation: either increase the budget or reduce the complexity.