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General discussion (archive)ArmA2 "Not COMPLETELY Broken"(22 posts)(22 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted May 29, 2009
but it sounds a fair bit like a traditional BIS release, hurried, buggy, devoid of QA and going to be fixed in a patch
http://www.pcgames.de/aid,685486/ArmA-2-PC-Games-testet-die-Militaer-Simulation-Update/PC/News/?page=2
It really does make me feel that Codemasters were responsible for almost all of the quality control in OFP
Posted May 29, 2009
Well, that's what happens when you do not have EA's budget but ARE working on one of the most ambitious games ever made ...
As long as they fix it (which they will), it's all good.
Posted May 29, 2009
How's ArmA? I've put off buying it for a long time, but I'm still interested in it. Is it still as unpolished as before? Is it buggier and more sluggish than OpF?
Posted May 29, 2009
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lowyhong: How's ArmA? I've put off buying it for a long time, but I'm still interested in it. Is it still as unpolished as before? Is it buggier and more sluggish than OpF?

The patches ironed out most of the bugs, and the patches have tons of content. Bohemia really did support it after it came out so many years later, which is great. Buy it, because there will still be people playing ArmA when ArmA 2 comes out. Just you wait and see.
Posted May 29, 2009
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lowyhong: Is it still as unpolished as before? Is it buggier and more sluggish than OpF?

Certainly was when I borrowed it off a mate a while ago, damned glad I didn't pay for it. Give it a go if you're a fan of user content and if you can find it cheap but the single player is worse than useless and thats the goal of a game for me
Posted May 29, 2009
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Aliasalpha: Certainly was when I borrowed it off a mate a while ago, damned glad I didn't pay for it. Give it a go if you're a fan of user content and if you can find it cheap but the single player is worse than useless and thats the goal of a game for me

Well, some people have ported OFP's CWC and Resistance campaigns to Armed Assault 1, and they seem to bring back all the excitement. If you're interested, I can post the link to it here, or you can look for it - I think the name of the mod is "Cold War Rearmed".
Posted May 29, 2009
Now this is just one review, so I don't want to jump the gun yet. I'm interested to see what other reviewers say. However, IF those guys are being fair with the criticism, then...
I really don't understand BIS. After Flashpoint and ARMA, they needed this one to have a solid release. They could have well and truly broken the pattern, and avoided the probably-permanent stigma of bug-ridden releases if they had spent the extra QA time on this before releasing it. No one expects "bug free", and especially not with a game of this (extremely impressive) scope; but there are reasonable limits to what is acceptable.
Unless other reviewers refute this report, then I will simply never even contemplate buying a BIS game on release. Not after three in a row.
I appreciate that they make games that no one else makes, and I appreciate that they support their games well and generally get them into a good state further down the track. What I don't understand is how they can possibly think that continually releasing their games WAY too early is a sustainable business tactic.
If they are intending to put in the support effort anyway (and I believe that they are), then it makes no sense to release their games in this kind of state. It hurts their review scores (which permanently affect their averages at sites like gamerankings.com); it puts people off buying their games at release time (not only for this game, but for their future games as well); and if you do buy it later, most likely the price has fallen and BIS don't get as much money from the sale.
Posted May 29, 2009
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Shadowcat: Now this is just one review, so I don't want to jump the gun yet. I'm interested to see what other reviewers say. However, IF those guys are being fair with the criticism, then...
I really don't understand BIS. After Flashpoint and ARMA, they needed this one to have a solid release. They could have well and truly broken the pattern, and avoided the probably-permanent stigma of bug-ridden releases if they had spent the extra QA time on this before releasing it. No one expects "bug free", and especially not with a game of this (extremely impressive) scope; but there are reasonable limits to what is acceptable.
Unless other reviewers refute this report, then I will simply never even contemplate buying a BIS game on release. Not after three in a row.
I appreciate that they make games that no one else makes, and I appreciate that they support their games well and generally get them into a good state further down the track. What I don't understand is how they can possibly think that continually releasing their games WAY too early is a sustainable business tactic.
If they are intending to put in the support effort anyway (and I believe that they are), then it makes no sense to release their games in this kind of state. It hurts their review scores (which permanently affect their averages at sites like gamerankings.com); it puts people off buying their games at release time (not only for this game, but for their future games as well); and if you do buy it later, most likely the price has fallen and BIS don't get as much money from the sale.

When you're dealing with a niche genre like this, you tend not to care about review scores in the first place.
It's like Egosoft and their X-series, all their games are buggy on release but their core audience is willing to put up with it and since their core audience probably makes up most of their total audience, a polished release tends to be put further down on the priority list compared to other things.
Why bother going the extra mile and refining a game before release when most of the people who would be turned away by potential glitches wouldn't be interested in your game to begin with?
I don't really like it any more than you do, but that's the way things tend to work with these games.
Post edited May 29, 2009 by paul1290
Posted May 29, 2009
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Shadowcat: Now this is just one review, so I don't want to jump the gun yet. I'm interested to see what other reviewers say. However, IF those guys are being fair with the criticism, then...
I really don't understand BIS. After Flashpoint and ARMA, they needed this one to have a solid release. They could have well and truly broken the pattern, and avoided the probably-permanent stigma of bug-ridden releases if they had spent the extra QA time on this before releasing it. No one expects "bug free", and especially not with a game of this (extremely impressive) scope; but there are reasonable limits to what is acceptable.
Unless other reviewers refute this report, then I will simply never even contemplate buying a BIS game on release. Not after three in a row.
I appreciate that they make games that no one else makes, and I appreciate that they support their games well and generally get them into a good state further down the track. What I don't understand is how they can possibly think that continually releasing their games WAY too early is a sustainable business tactic.
If they are intending to put in the support effort anyway (and I believe that they are), then it makes no sense to release their games in this kind of state. It hurts their review scores (which permanently affect their averages at sites like gamerankings.com); it puts people off buying their games at release time (not only for this game, but for their future games as well); and if you do buy it later, most likely the price has fallen and BIS don't get as much money from the sale.

Now if they were releasing their games incomplete and then selling the rest of the game to you separately for extra, now that would be a sustainable business practice...
Posted May 29, 2009
I guess this was to be expected, again.
In one way, I don't mind it so much, because I really appreciate these huge, ambitious projects and I realize that they are always going to be more difficult to create than games that "play it safe". Kieron Gillen illustrated my viewpoint very well in his review of Boiling Point from a few years back.
But on the other hand, there are limits to what I'll accept. So I'm not going to buy this game on release. I'll wait for a few patches, and a price reduction, and then buy.
Though I _will_ buy it. If nothing else because I fell in love with the mission editor of Operation Flashpoint & ArmA (that, plus LAN-coop, equals amazing amounts of fun), and I can't wait to try the new one.
Posted May 29, 2009
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paul1290: Why bother going the extra mile and refining a game before release when most of the people who would be turned away by potential glitches wouldn't be interested in your game to begin with?
Remember that Flashpoint sold well over a million copies. That's hardly a niche market to my mind, even if BIS don't have the Codemasters marketing muscle behind them now, so I'm not at all convinced that the majority of their potential customers will ignore bad reviews and buy the game regardless. (Personally I suspect it's actually the other way around.)
But regardless, if your core audience represents more-or-less guaranteed sales, and you intend to fix the major bugs anyway, why not fix them before release rather than after? Doing so will maximise your reach into the non-core market (or grow your core market, to view it a different way), which maximises your profit from the endeavour. I don't see how that can be anything other than a good thing for BIS.
Posted May 29, 2009
It's just another business model for most of the companies who create our games. Even console games being released at this point in time tend to have bugs and glitches, and the whole reason for getting a console is to have a bug-free, glitch-free existence.
It baffles the mind, it truly does. Granted, not every machine makeup can be tested to ensure 100% compatibility, but some of these games being released these days are... incomplete. All the way around.
I am very careful about what I buy these days.
Posted May 29, 2009
Since I don't have a game capable PC its not like I can play either but I'm looking forward to OFP2 more. I'll very probably get both anyway but I'm anticipating OFP2 to be the better option
I'm only hoping that the campaign for arma2 is nothing like as shit as the first one was, I've seen better missions made by first timers and when even I'VE made better missions then you know there's problems
Posted May 29, 2009
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CymTyr: It's just another business model for most of the companies who create our games. Even console games being released at this point in time tend to have bugs and glitches, and the whole reason for getting a console is to have a bug-free, glitch-free existence.
It baffles the mind, it truly does. Granted, not every machine makeup can be tested to ensure 100% compatibility, but some of these games being released these days are... incomplete. All the way around.
I am very careful about what I buy these days.

Honestly, I'd much prefer a buggy game to a polished but incomplete or hollow game like say, Far Cry 2. That game was really well polished but was so amazingly repeditive and shallow that it was a major disappointment. I just really don't like not getting my money's worth, and If I'm paying for a game, I expect to get the whole thing regardless of whether it works entirely as it should. What's worse is that the majority of modern games are actually intentionally left in complete so that companies can sell their stupid DLC mini expansions and crap. I mean, Sims 3 already has items you can pay real money for in their cash shop from what I hear, and a severely lacking number of actual included items. Take this model and compare it to Egosoft's. Sure they release games that are generally unstable at release, but at least the whole game is there. You actually get what you paid for, even if it's only eventually. Unlike a game like Oblivion or something where you end up with doors in the world that you actually have to pay money to unlock, and well, Oblivion was just a mediocre game in general, but that's beside the point. Now I'll stop rambling.
Oh yeah and before I forget... The Witcher: Enhanced Edition.
Post edited May 29, 2009 by Shoelip
Posted May 30, 2009
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Shoelip: Honestly, I'd much prefer a buggy game to a polished but incomplete or hollow game like say, Far Cry 2. That game was really well polished but was so amazingly repeditive and shallow that it was a major disappointment. I just really don't like not getting my money's worth, and If I'm paying for a game, I expect to get the whole thing regardless of whether it works entirely as it should. What's worse is that the majority of modern games are actually intentionally left in complete so that companies can sell their stupid DLC mini expansions and crap. I mean, Sims 3 already has items you can pay real money for in their cash shop from what I hear, and a severely lacking number of actual included items. Take this model and compare it to Egosoft's. Sure they release games that are generally unstable at release, but at least the whole game is there. You actually get what you paid for, even if it's only eventually. Unlike a game like Oblivion or something where you end up with doors in the world that you actually have to pay money to unlock, and well, Oblivion was just a mediocre game in general, but that's beside the point. Now I'll stop rambling.
Oh yeah and before I forget... The Witcher: Enhanced Edition.

The Enhanced Edition was a free download to anyone who had previously bought the original Witcher and registered it. I am unsure if you were referring to the free update or saying people had to pay extra, which is why I'm clarifying.
As far as incomplete games, I did mention that many games are "incomplete - all the way around" ;) I didn't mean just in terms of QA testing, I meant also the games that you mentioned, which are released with expansions coming out every few months following. I believe Diablo 3 has at least 2 expansions planned for it, so Blizz is no different.
I remember when I first got into computer gaming, and the internet was not a common phenomenon. The vast majority of games were complete works.... And I'd have to point out that what you refer to as far as companies pitching partial games just boils down to greed, just like rushing an unfinished game out the door, unless the studio is failing financially and hopes box sales will supplement it until it can fix the game...
I really do not think any company that is established and has a healthy bankroll should want or need to publish games that require more than one or two patches over the life of the game. No offense to you ArmA fans out there... just saying.
-Cym
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General discussion (archive)ArmA2 "Not COMPLETELY Broken"(22 posts)(22 posts)
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