Arma 3 future?

[Mitton]

Hey

Just making this topic as a gamer.  Do not be afraid

I'm starting to feel like Arma 3 isn't going to become the title we hoped it would.  I mean, it's great at being Arma 3, but it's been a stinker of a hard time making it a great community server.  It's taken many hundreds of hours to tune to make it DayZ, and then many hundreds more every time an update rolls out and breaks the way we have things configured.  The difficult bit is, if it was attracting and holding the players, and growing the ugN membership, it would be worth it.  But it isn't playing out like that.  We lose regulars with every update, and then we're just hosting for visitors and loyal ugN'ers.  The cycle has happened too many times for me to think there's anything we can do to break that cycle.

Also, as a gamer, and as much as I love the mechanics of the game and the way we have it confingured, without players I'm getting bored   I'd play other things, but I really like gaming with ugN and would sooner play something together than find something new on my own.  Awwwww

How's the rest of the community feeling about the game?  Is it time to discuss new games like maybe a DayZ Standalone server?

EDIT****  Holy crap!  £30 per month for Standalone server!  Why?

[Dave790]

It gets worse..... about £60 a month for a private shard, the reason they charge so much is because they can 
 A public shard would just get you server hopping loot trolls KOSing like twats and the Private shard is extortionately priced 

[KrisiS]

I find this a difficult topic to comment on apart from as a 'backend' admin.
I've not really gotten into the game much, partly because any time I've played it I seem to end up spending the entire time testing or tweaking something new as opposed to just getting lost in the experience.

A big part of what I want from the game is simply an immersive survival experience. I can't seem to find this when I rarely log in to play for a bit.

I think the server as we have it looks pretty good and is configured somewhat near where we want it to be. We've leaned heavily towards DayZ and survival but have offered a bit of Exile & Arma 3 too. The only thing our server appears to be missing is the player base. This alone creates endless amounts of epic encounters, raids, firefights, comradery, betrayal and team-play etc... Without the playerbase, this simply can't happen.

As regards to where we could go in order to build the community, I'm stumped. I feel as PC gamers, that we are limited to where we can turn due to the way new games have been made.


Just a few thoughts:

• 7 Days to Die
• DayZ - Mod
• DayZ - Standalone
• Call of Duty 4
• Battlefield 4
• Insurgency
• Minecraft
• Rust
• ARK: SE
• CS:GO

[Dave790]

We have tried most of the Arma range, DayZ mod, DayZ Epoch, Exile Vanilla on Altis and Esseker (it was broken from the start ) and now Arma 3 DayZ with the smallest pinch of Exile we can get away with. I love playing all of them, but they can get a bit monotonous. Pinkys Klen mission was a great addition but some of the other missions are samey, maybe a mix up of missions ( i miss Pinkys Villa).
 

[KrisiS]

I don't think investing in the missions is going to grow our playerbase though and I think this is the major downfall we have.
I must check to see if that Villa can be spawned


I do ask myself this question though. Why are we trying so hard (unsuccessfully) to create our DayZ Mod experience of days gone by instead of simply playing DayZ Mod?
I know the graphics are nice and modern, but sadly I feel that this is about the only thing.

[Mitton]

I do ask myself this question though. Why are we trying so hard (unsuccessfully) to create our DayZ Mod experience of days gone by instead of simply playing DayZ Mod?
I know the graphics are nice and modern, but sadly I feel that this is about the only thing.

Sadly yes.  Graphics are the only real improvement.  I guess the ai are a bit better too, and the player mechanics, but not much else.  The loots and base building all look great, but on an empty server it doesn't amount to anything really

I honestly think that back in ~May/June the experience was as close to DayZ mod as it was possible to get.  I'd play that version with 15+ players on it all day every day instead of Arma 2 DayZ mod.  It was brilliant.  But the nature of people not being able to connect (Exile nubs Vs Steam Workshop), updates breaking the game, and not being able to get word out about the server make it something really difficult to see a future in.  It could never be said that we didn't give it a damn good go, against all the odds (and there were many!).

I'd play DayZ mod again.  Or Standalone.  Or any of the titles listed above to be honest.  Except Minecraft   Not interested in Minecraft   Maybe one of the other Arma 3 mods should be on the list too, like Breaking Point? - http://dayzintel.com/arma-3-mods/arma-3-breaking-point

[KrisiS]

The problem with Breaking Point is that they offer only public servers to play on. This makes it next to impossible to further build the community as we would have no place to call our home base to work out of.

Stand Alone, the cheapest (decent) private server I can come across at first glimpse is about £40/ pm

I can't for the life of me think of what else we could possibly do for the Flashback Server. It's renewal is not too far off now so it certainly does do us well to have a game plan.
Perhaps some others might have some more insight or ideas?

[Dave790]

Just an idea... but a slot on a RUST server is only 13p each, you could get a 75 slot server for under £10 a month. I've never played the game but it has base building, crafting, survival, zombies and you spawn with nothing ( literally    ) I might give it a try at the weekend.

[Dave790]

I voted to keep the A3 server and add another game server, the hours and hours of hard work put into Arma 3 has to be kept but add another game server.

[St4Lk3r]

why not keep the Arma 3 server, and go wasteland mod or King of the Hill mod?

Exile if you stilll want the basebuilding etc, or life to create a community?

If you want to go standalone, our experience, it is hard to build a community there, especially if you have a 50-60 man private server
We had scripts on it, that kept statistics (how many kills and deaths etc) we were the only server that had statistics and still we had to drop the server, its 110 euros a month, and that hurts if barely people play on it

But if you still want to go DayZ SA, we can work something out for that script i guess

Other game what i am looking forward to is "escape from karkov" waiting till the 4th of august, then it comes out in Alpha and waiting for some real footage of the game instead of trailers

but if that will be a hit, is that an idea (takes a while tho)

[Dave790]

After 7hrs straight on Rust, i fookin like it. Lost my key to my base, bollox 

[Multi-Vitamine]

Considering the kind of players that are most active now, i think we should invest in an open world building and hunting game for the regulars..

and keep an eye out for big community games that have dedicated servers.

[KrisiS]

Good input St4Lk3r, thanks

I think SA is way out of the question for us, the game itself is just not in a place where we want it to be at the moment.

Sadly our Arma 3 server has not attracted the numbers we need to keep it fresh and interesting. I don't see much point in holding onto it when it's clearly not going where we want it to be.

My 2 cents would be to swap ARMA III to DayZ Mod for the rest of it's renewal. After that period we could reevaluate it again.
We could pick up a rust server for a trial period assuming people had the interest and owned the game.

[PvtMorph]

I am up for going back to dayz mod, I enjoyed playing it again last nite. SA I have never been a fan of, the game just isn't right for the length of time it has been out.

[Dave790]

I'm ok with going back to A2 Vanilla, Rust is fun and the servers are cheap to get. It has a level system so you can't just make guns and C4 from the get go, the bears and wolfs are OP by the way