ArmA3: Roadmap 2015/2016 (2 updates, 1 expansion)

Arma Lounge
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So, Bohemia released a new roadmap for ArmA3, which includes plenty of exciting new information!

There will be 2 major platform updates, named Nexus and Eden, both 100% free for all game owners.

Nexus update is told to bring:

  • Improved fatigue system and personal protection
  • New "End Game" varieties
  • General improvements in animations, sounds, AI
  • "Arma 3 Units" web-based system for organized groups

Eden will show us:

  • An increase in funtionality of game and 3D Editor
  • Introduction of new graphical effects (such as water and shaders)
  • New server browser and session joining system
  • Tweaks to controls, weapon switching, difficulty selection
  • Game launcher improvements (like mod dependancies)

Third thing - expansion pack, called Apex, will deliver:

  • New Tanoa map
  • Coop campaign
  • New vehicles (such as: VTOL, Light Strike Vehicles)
  • New weapons
  • New characters
  • Near modern day armaments (not near-future weapons)
  • Main menu redesign
  • Overhaul of user interface, communication and interaction systems.

All features will be free for everyone, however the content from expansion pack will be paid (premium), similarly how Helicopters/Marksmen DLC did it.

Nexus will hit November 2015
Eden goes live Q1 2016
Apex should be here Q2 2016

You can read the official post by clicking the link below:

Hyped yet? :slight_smile:

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Nice summary of what’s to come, Abuk! Easily digestible and coherent with the current news.

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This is where problems ensue. If they create viable alternatives to current "near-future" weapons and vehicles, it would be better for framerate, for everyone to use these weapons and vehicles (instead of modded ones). But is it moral and healthy to ask of current and upcoming members to own expansion pack as well? OA was standalone, but can’t remember it’s price relative to A2, nor do we know how much will Apex be worth.

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The problem is they have to make money somehow, and I can’t see a better way for them to do it without splitting the player base and making us pay for every little thing. Yes in a perfect world, every member would easily get there hands on this content, but the world ain’t perfect. I’m sure as time goes on the mods will improve in order to increase FPS (I hope!).

I will be purchasing the expansion by pre-ordering if possible. This is the only game that I will consider pre-ordering these days but I don’t do it for the new content, I do it to show support for BIS. It’s a shame that we may not be able to use the new content due to the cost to players, but that’s the way it is.

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We’ve shown support to BIS by buying the game to begin with. What they delivered was a terrain, textures and a thoroughly broken AI.

Then they advanced on that by issuing a paid DLC instead of fixing what was broken, after which they added features they picked up from users who selflessly created content in their own free time and only THEN did they implement a new, working AI system, which I suspect is also based on said user content.

So, while I do appreciate their generating new content, it is in my opinion highly immoral and devious to create new, paid-for content while the content you paid for initially has to be heavily modded to even make sense playing.

Knowing the average price for Arma 3 is probably around 40$ (taking account of g2a, g2play, etc) and that over 2 million copies have been sold, I’d say we were very good alpha testers and should get any new content free of any charge because at 80.000.000 income, we really shouldn’t be worried whether we’ll fall through a balcony or not.

But that’s just my opinion…

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[user avatar=“https://assets-cloud.enjin.com/users/13688759/avatar/small.1433274021.jpeg” name=“Chypsa”]13688759[/user] gaming industry is a business, its not a charity. Bohemia is extremely fair. You knew what game you bought in the first place and you can never expect improvements on it. Theres plenty of game titles that never got out of early access stage or were abandoned by their authors.

Its not like you have a game for 40$ and you sell 2M copies so you get 80M income. You pay taxes, steam fees, servers upkeep, technology and copyright fees if you use external solutions, you need to cover living costs for development time (salary for each programmer, art designer, animator, sound guy etc.) and equipment to develop the game (PC’s, audio recording, mocap, scriptwriting, game advertisement etc).

It’s an extremely expensive thing to do. Arma is a sandbox game which gives extreme freedom to the player and modability. It’s much easier to create bug-free game like call of duty or battlefield compared to arma, because you can limit user actions by having scripted solutions or limited content. AI doesn’t need to work in all conditions but only on X specified maps that wont change and follow simple engagement rules.

BI is a small-moderate studio based in Czech republic.
All the features they made were given free of charge.
Things like firing from vehicles, bipods and weapon resting, AI suppression, advanced flight model, sling loading, 3D editor etc. were never a vanilla part of arma series and they were given for free to everyone. Give me one game title that gives so much game improvements and content to all users free of charge.

Its not like you earned money once and you’re done for, then you’re doing everything for free.
You still have several costs and you still WORK so you want to get money for your work, which is totaly fair.

They did not separate community at any stage and all DLC content can be found "unlocked" as user-made mods if one does not wish to pay for it. You can always work around because of beautiful modable nature of arma.

However I see it fair to support people who work hard on a single product, constantly improving it, refining, adding new content. I’d rather support them and buy DLC package or expansion even if it adds X number of things that I will probably not use in multiplayer scenario because I can enjoy all the core features without giving a penny, than to be forced to pay 10-30$ to get some extremely important fixes and content updates.

Examples of doing it wrong?

Planetary Annihilation and its Titans expansion
Every CoD game after CoD:MW1
Battlefield series with their season passes
and many many more

Those games wont have a living gaming community around them that will last years.
They are one-season hits, that get new release each year, splitting the community every time and doing it even more with pay-to-win or pay-to-enjoy DLC’s.

Would you pay 60$ for Battlefield:Modern Warfare 20?
Or would you pay 40$ for Arma3 once and play it for years, and keep supporting its development by paying ~20$ a year for all DLC’s/Expansions that you do not require to enjoy all of its features?

Dont get me wrong, everyone has right to his opinion and he has some good points in it.
Thats my opinion, and its based on my observations and experiance.

Edit: If you want to see how hard it is to develop a working sandbox-like game, take a look at www.playrust.com
Rust is being developed for 2-3 years by Garry Newman, creator of Garry’s Mod which earned millions.
Each week or two they release a post with details of what they did and how it works, in-depth analysis of how job like their’s look like.

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I did say income, not profit. I didn’t feel elaborating was needed.

Yes, I do agree with you on some points, but playing a broken game for two years only to find out there’s new content coming out, which will probably suffer from all the same defects just doesn’t make me want to give them more money.

Here’s an example of doing it right (disregard the decline in difficulty and overall community shortcomings, which are aplenty):

World of Warcraft

You buy a game, it works. You play it for 3 years while receiving regular updates which patch errors every 2-3 months and minor patches regularly. The game is shockingly full of content to begin with.

You buy the expansion, it works. You play it for 2 years while receiving regular updates which patch errors every 2-3 months and minor patches regularly. The game is shockingly full of content to begin with.

You buy the second expansion, it works. You play it for 2 years while receiving regular updates which patch errors every 2-3 months and minor patches regularly. The game is shockingly full of content to begin with.

You buy the third expansion…

You get the gist of it. There were five of them. They’ve released five expansions, each virtually doubling the content of the previous, while you could buy them for the price of one Arma DLC on sites like g2a. Usually the month before and after a major release were messed up while everything else worked like magic. The initial release was in dev for 4 years and I don’t regret a single penny of the sub-fee I paid cause for that money - I got premium content.

THAT’S why it lasted 11 frikkin years. They didn’t give you Azeroth and then say…well, you see, we’ve added enemies, but you can’t really use them because the framerate will drop to 0 if you place more than 20 of them at the same time on an area the size of New York. And there’s also buildings but don’t use them cause you’ll die. And also, if you encounter any AI chances are they will kill you before you even see them cause they have lazor eyes. Oh, btw, we’ve added a sling-load for your Gryphons so you can carry shit around. Also, there’s no content, you’ll get that later. Just…walk around and enjoy this big ol’ Island until the community sorts shit out…

And let’s not forget all the income they received from people buying Arma 2 just to play DayZ, with wich they had no work at all.

I like (almost dare to say - love) Arma, but it still is and very much was a broken game when it was released and for all the frustration taken from playing a broken game for at least a year before shit started getting sorted out, yes, I feel I deserve an expansion with no charge cause it’s the community that’s gonna do the hard work again. Heck, the only reason I play it is because of CNTO.

I don’t expect them to offer content on-par with Blizzard as that’s where the sub-fee money goes, but some basic shit like not falling through balconies, rocks and staircases would really be nice and I think even a small development team should be able to handle that. Plus, they’re not really THAT small, they have 200+ employees. Not like it’s 2 guys at their aunt’s basement producing games.

Also, yes, I’m cranky and have excess time on my hands :cool:

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Just a quick note on your example - you buy it and you pay MONTHLY for it to play even the basic content. So your example doesnt work. Arma doesnt have monthly-paid subscriptions.

Edit: yes i know you can pay for in-game currency now, but back then for years it wasnt an option. And Blizzard is a huge corporation, not a small studio. They had the funds and people to develop such product and they got great playerbase to begin with. Arma3 is a niche game.

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Ah, but as I said:

[quote name=“I dont expect them to offer content on-par with Blizzard as thats where the sub-fee money goes”][/quote]

Now, if Arma 3 sold 2 mio copies and, as Guy Kawasaki would say, we’re being conservative, 1% of that is our current playerbase. That’s 20 000 players actively playing the game. I don’t think supporting that playerbase should be such a big problem, even if they are a small studio with no play fee, especially with public demands being so trivial. If it were better polished, I’d gladly pay a fee for it too. But it’s not, so they resort to publishing DLCs.

Blizzard used their monthly fees to fund server-farms to support 6 MILLION players every DAY. It’s highly likely the majority of the income went to upkeep and a big chunk to development of new products, while it’s also likely the sales went into shareholder’s accounts. The players, in turn, received an amazing product. 6 mil x 30$ is 180 000 000 per edition. Compare the content in Arma which cost 80 000 000 + what they want for DLC’s and you’re at what I’m looking - not really sure where the money went.

There’s a clear relation of the benefits there, while I don’t find it so clear in Bohemia’s case.

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At any rate, I’m home now and am spending time with the kid so:

YAAY, new Arma content, can’t wait to see what goodies we get! I’ll probably even buy the expansion! :slight_smile:

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You have to look past the front page. We’re the Czech people, we are incredibly, unbelievably lazy. More so than any other nation. We always look for the least-effort way of getting as much as possible from the little we put in. New engine for arma? Naah, too much work that’s hard to justify. Actually using sensible network protocols? Naah, we’d have to rework what we have.
I know - let’s do something new, something that’s actually fun, creates hype and moves the focus away from the ever growing list of bugs - new terrain! New campaign! New weapons! Forget the bugs, here, have some more bullet types.

Fixing bugs, maintenance, refactoring code, improving performance, …, all that doesn’t have easily measurable financial impact, so it’s given a low priority. For any company, not just BIS.