Jason Moyer on 26/5/2012 at 11:45
Quote Posted by henke
Ok, so I start pedaling down the road and pretty soon I get told not to leave my troops behind, so I look back and they're all back at the starting point and I can't figure out how to make them follow me.
You use the command interface that the game teaches you in basic training.
henke on 26/5/2012 at 12:38
Basic training had been 2 years ago for me though, when I played the game last time and I really didn't want to replay any basic training tutorials for something I'll likely just get bored with again. I did figure out how to tell my dudes to get in and out of a car in the previous mission though, so I figured telling them to follow me shouldn't be that much more difficult, but it was.
If only the missions in the game revolved around telling men to get in and out of cars I would kick ass at this game tho!
Sg3 on 26/5/2012 at 14:48
Yeah, to be honest with you, the game's interface is somewhat horrid, and not only for new people. At the very least, it's clunky and complicated. Since I learned it, I'm glad--for myself--that the controls are that complex, because it allows me to customize them to my taste. I still take five minutes to tell an A.I. squad to equip and get in the bloody truck, though.
So I'm not gonna say there's nothing about the game I dislike. There's more than a few things which annoy me. But, once you get used to the interface, and if you can get past the clumsy physics and other bugaboos, there is a lot of amazing stuff--much of which no other game has done, either before or since. And there's a lot of cool stuff that BIS has done which was never done before, but which other games started copying since. A very original game, if unpolished. Not for everyone, though, so I can understand if some people don't care for it.
If you give it another try, however, I very much recommend that you drag the head bob slider to minimum, in the game options. With it set to zero, you get a nice natural head bob. Any higher than zero, though, and you get the "drunken Russian" effect. I don't know why BIS decided to make "Blair Witch cam" the default. I don't know why anyone would want to play as a cerebral palsy sufferer on the battlefield. Aesthetics aside, it makes spotting enemies very difficult, and spotting enemies is the most important part of the combat.
Yakoob on 26/5/2012 at 18:06
Wow, over a decade since original OpFor and they STILL haven't figured out how to make the interface not suck total ass?
Now, the original game was awesome and I loved it to bits, but hated later-game missions where you have to command a squad, it always felt like a some sort of puzzle time-attack game of "CAN YOU MOVE YOUR TROOPS AWAY BEFORE THE TANK COMES???" Especially since the game has no "pause" for giving commands...
Jason Moyer on 26/5/2012 at 20:25
Maybe it's just from playing so much OFP and ArmA I, but I can't say I've had any problems with the command interface. To use the example you just gave, you just have to hit the tilde key to select your entire squad, bring up the map, and click wherever you want them to move to. Or don't even bring up the map, just hit tilde, space to go into 'command mode' or whatever, and then click anywhere to get them to go there.
Malleus on 26/5/2012 at 20:34
@Yakoob
You're kidding? The only missions that suck are the ones where you don't get to command your own squad. Can't remember the success rate in OFP, but in A2, the AI always screws up squad command - it even failed some missions for me, and I couldn't do anything because I was just a grunt. Give me command and I'll obliterate an entire army with a 12 men squad. :cool:
Also, the interface is fine once you get used to it. After a while you just type in the numbers, you don't even look (like ~-1-6 for "All, Stop").
Neb on 26/5/2012 at 20:45
Quote Posted by Yakoob
Now, the original game was awesome and I loved it to bits, but hated later-game missions where you have to command a squad, it always felt like a some sort of puzzle time-attack game of "CAN YOU MOVE YOUR TROOPS AWAY BEFORE THE TANK COMES???" Especially since the game has no "pause" for giving commands...
I always had great fun replaying everything using different strategies. To me, the hardest missions were far from being puzzles as they were also the ones that forked into very different experiences on separate attempts.
Sg3 on 27/5/2012 at 01:51
Quote Posted by Malleus
Also, the interface is fine once you get used to it. After a while you just type in the numbers, you don't even look (like ~-1-6 for "All, Stop").
I've got all of the commands memorized. The problem is when it comes to things which cannot be memorized because they are randomized, such as "Board that tank at 2 o' clock." Sometimes you have to scroll through four pages of vehicles, and each time it's different. The same vehicle can be a different number on each scrollthrough, in fact. The same goes for actions, such as "gear" or "take M9." If there are more than a couple of items present, it often doesn't even show a command for your man to take the specific item you want him to.
Which brings me to the second and even worse time-waster: gearing your troops. If you don't have the opportunity to fiddle with their gear before the mission starts, hoo boy. The gear screen is unresponsive--double-clicks are often not recognized because they are too fast or too slow (I can understand too slow, but too fast?), and even the single-clicks on the left part of the interface often aren't acknowledged.
Finally, the scroll system for troop selection is god-awful. I'm not particularly pissed about there being multiple pages, as that's something of a necessity, but why--oh, why--is there no way to re-assign their numbers? There've been times when I've had 30 troops (that's three pages) and all of them died except for one, and that sole survivor was one of the ones on the third page. So when I requisition 6 more troops, giving me a total of 7, I now have 6 on the first page and 1 on the third page (and none on the second page). To give a command to the seventh, I have to scroll over two pages, for no reason! This is ridiculous--even if the game isn't kind enough to automatically place him on the first page once the others are dead, it should give me the option to re-assign his number, so that I can move him over myself.
However! All this bitching aside, I love
Arma 2. I really do. It's easier to bitch about the few, relatively minor problems than it is to gush over the many excellent features, which one tends to take for granted. There are really only two major problems with
Arma 2, in my opinion; one is the clumsy infantry movement (including, but not limited to, the ludicrously out-of-shape soldiers--honestly, guys, I'm in better shape than that, and I sit on my ass all day), and the second is the cheating A.I. It is no fun when the A.I. can see through trees and grass, while human players can't. I've had to tone the A.I. skill level down to 34% to try to compensate for this; but now they are retarded, which isn't much fun either.
And yet, even with these two "major" problems, I still manage to immensely enjoy
Arma 2 every day, provided that I have a few friends to play with who like playing on the difficulty settings I use. The game needs more work, but it's still fun to play, even in it's semi-finished state. Hopefully
Arma 3 will be as promising as it appears to be.
demagogue on 27/5/2012 at 02:14
Another cool thing about ArmA2 for us, of course, is that someone in our community worked for BI on the game, Dram, who did some Thief mapping and now Dark Mod mapping.
Jason Moyer on 27/5/2012 at 02:54
Quote Posted by Sg3
I've got all of the commands memorized. The problem is when it comes to things which cannot be memorized because they are randomized, such as "Board that tank at 2 o' clock."
Select the troops you want to issue that command to using ~ and/or the number keys, then click on the tank. The vast majority of nested menus can be avoided by just clicking on things in the world after you've selected someone to give an order to. If something can't be easily clicked on from normal first person view, you can press space (unless it's changed in ArmA II, I can't remember) to go into command mode and move the camera around freely. You can also issue movement commands on the map. Orders to target things can be done by selecting someone to command or the whole squad and clicking on the enemy.
There are needlessly complicated commands you can issue your troops, but I can't honestly say I've ever found a need to use them. The primary things are selecting squadmates, telling them to return to formation, selecting a formation, and telling them to mount or unmount something, and changing stances/ROE (hold fire, open fire, go prone, STEALTH!!, DANGER!, etc). 99% of the time they just need to follow you and stay in formation. If I'm entering a dangerous area I'll use bounding overwatch, but I typically do that the same way I do in GRAW or BIA or whatever, just ordering everyone to move ahead while I watch for enemies, then I move ahead of them while they cover me, and so on.
