Arma 3 announced

[Chappie]

Anybody else having framerate issues?


In MP I'm having a really hard time staying above 30 fps, no matter what I set visually. As long as it's above 30, it's pretty smooth, but below that, it's pretty bad.

I have an i7 930 @ 3.4Ghz and a GTX670, so it's not like I'm on really weak hardware or anything.

It's just strange that no matter what visual settings I pick, I can't get the framerate above 30-35 fps.

Everyone has the same problem..the way the game is coded has alot to do with it from what I hear. Once there are too many AI activated during a Multiplayer game then it goes downhill fast. It's a little better if you can connect to a server with a low ping.

Try this, fire up the editor and explore with just yourself...then gradually add ai. It's just the way BI's engine for the game is. They have made no engine improvements since ARMA...just graphical really. Oh, and player movements...but that didn't help the games performance.

Chappie

 

[Demo24]

Is there anyway to play the beta without buying? I want to play it, but having not played arma since the very early days of 2(probably a demo) I don't remember it much.

 

[Remobz]

We had this guy join us who had never played a PC game before, let alone Arma or any FPS. His friend has played with us for years and having talked about the game for ages (Arma 2 this is) the guy decided to join up and see what the fuss was about. We were doing what we call an ambush mission, we all got into a truck, drove out across the sandy lands of an Afghanistan like map and after about 3 minutes we hit a mine and we all died. Mission over.

The second mission that night we went in a HMMV column, this time in Takistan and the new guy joined the fire team who was in the front vehicle in the column. We got ambushed on the side of a valley, the initial damage taken was from an enemy placed mine - which destroyed the first vehicle and killed the new guy again.

This new guy played for 2 hours, all he did was get into a vehicle with his team mates and get blown up by a mine, twice in a row. We asked him how his first night was and he said "This is awesome".

You have to get a perverse pleasure out of all the training, out of all the tactics, communication and then potentially a good fire fight. Its not going to always be highly intense, you regularly can't find out where the darn enemy is, so you have to pop up, move around etc rather than staying put while taking fire. Sometimes you just get shot once and your dead and other times you clear a load of buildings that has no one in them. But there is no other game that can give you the wide range of combat options and where using real military tactics is a requirement to have a chance of completing the missions. It is an amazing game, nothing else like it exists, and I really think it is best played inside of a community that makes missions and runs a lot of the custom mods. The game becomes great when you play it with a team, soloing isn't really very entertaining.

I am loving the Alpha and beta, the new stances are great, the new vehicle mecahnics, the graphics, the sound its all much improved. The new fog for example is really nice and now we have a lot of our usual mods up (medic system, marker system, weapons and gear layout customisations) we are having a blast. Its not for everyone, just shooting targets can be tricky in Arma 3, but its a game that after 2 years I still haven't mastered, because there is a whole profession to be learned (soldering) to do well in this game.

You wrote some good points here. My problem is that I play games for fun and my time is very limited these days. Some days I am lucky if I can spare 2 hours to play a game. But, 2 hours of dying twice by mines like the new guy is not fun in my books. When I was younger I would play for hours and hours on end. Those days seem like a distant memory now.

I respect the developers a lot for what they have and are trying to accomplish with the arma series of games.

As for me, I will have to pass on this game.

I still love watching some missions of arma 2 on youtube. I can imagine it takes a long while to master this game.

 

[scooterlibby]

Yeah, Arma still doesn't have intuitive menus.

After you connect to a server, you'll see boxes with Player Names on the right and a box of player roles (Medic, Sniper, etc.) on the left. Click on one of the roles (doesn't matter which one right now) and your name will appear under it. Then click OK on the lower right hand corner of the screen.

That should get you in... I think. I'm writing this from memory.

I've been playing a ton of Wasteland mode today and it is a blast.

Yeah that's the screen I see, but any time I click on a role the OK button stays greyed out. Still haven't been able to play.

 

[BrightCandle]

Multiplayer FPS issues are mostly likely due to the mission. If the server FPS drops too low then the client FPS is impacted. Many server administrators are running many servers on the same hardware and it has an impact on all the players running on all the servers. Some missions just spawn too much AI or has too many players in it for the quality of the hardware.

An Arma 3 server with a 3770 in it can push about 150 AI maximum along with about 60 players. If either of those is breached the client FPS and server FPS will drop dramatically. There are also some scripts out there that have major impacts on client FPS as well, they are simply badly written.

So normally its the server admin or mission makers fault. Choose a different mission and server and you will likely find FPS go up.

 

[Stringjam]

I kind of figured it might be on the server end, because I can get the showcases FPS up a little higher than the MP.

I can jump into a wasteland server with zero players, however, and still have framerate issues.

The worst is when driving vehicles. Sometimes I'll drop down in the low teens driving a vehicle, which makes driving extremely difficult.

Hopefully they can get some of this stuff worked out on the server side. I know running AI scripts is very CPU intensive.

 

[Dankk]

This game is definitely CPU-limited.

When I play the singleplayer showcases, I get around 60 FPS on high settings (not ultra).

When I hop onto a 60-man Wasteland server online, I get an absolutely god-awful 20 FPS or so. MSI Afterburner tells me my GPU is only under 16% load. Absolutely unplayable.

 

[WiseUp216]

View Distance has a huge effect on FPS, from what I can tell. Drop it under 3000 and see how it looks/runs. With 670 SLI, I keep mine set around 3400.

I also turned off the radial/rotation blur, too. It looked awful and actually hurt performance.

 

[themadhatterxxx]

They have made no engine improvements since Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis...just graphical really. Oh, and player movements...but that didn't help the games performance.

Chappie

There fixed that for ya. :sneaky:

 

[Nemesis13]

I really don't recommend wasteland or domination servers. What you are looking for is a good clan that plays a tactical organised military game. That is where the best games are.

If your in Europe try the Tier1Ops server, they play some pretty decent tactical games on their public server.

Funny thats the server i joined at random and had a damn blast.

 

[Nemesis13]

Anyone pick this up during the summer sale?

 

[BrightCandle]

I picked up Arma 2 in the sale (for a server account)!

 

[SLU Aequitas]

Anyone pick this up during the summer sale?

Picked it up as well, mostly for the heli's. It's on my backburner after Metro: Last Light

 

[WiseUp216]

If you're into zombie survival mods (yea, I know most people are sick of that), check out the Breaking Point mod for Arma 3.

http://www.thezombieinfection.com/

I've put 250 hours into it and it is always getting better. It is more Military-PVP focused than zombie survival. Six different factions to choose from so you get more variety than just Hero/Bandit gameplay.

Server performance is better than any other mod I've played. I consistently average 70-90 FPS on a full server with 70 players. They're currently testing 125 player servers. A new custom map is due any day now. There is another map that they've been teasing us with that is 1,600 square meters - 8 times the size of Altis! I don't expect it to be available this year though.

Hackers seem to be nonexistent, too. In all my time playing, I've never seen anything that looked shady. Some people have been popped for duping items but they get weeded out pretty quickly.

 

[Ampersand38]

If you specifically want to use one in the campaign missions, you can get one when you arrive at the camp on Altis and are allowed to free roam to go scouting. Some of the soldiers will mention a weapons smuggler's depot. Walk out of the camp and take a vehicle to the map marker, and get yourself some shiny loot.

If you just want to play around with them, you can just hop into the editor and give yourself whatever weapon/targets you want. Also, if you look on Steam Workshop, probably half the missions there are for snipers.