Why not keep the animation quality? | Arma Reforger

[@glennpeterson1357]

Do you not recall when ambulances came out there were NO rear door animations? The animations came later

[@caracal3892]

I am not sure if I noticed that, when I started playing the animations were there (in June I think)

[@Chaos_Major1]

@@caracal3892 yeah at the start the doors kinda just flew open and you kinda just like leaned in and teleported to the seat

[@coenvancamp1976]

'If animations suck in the beginning, they usually never get better' - Speaking as a game developer myself. (albeit not in animation) this is a really bad take and simply not true. For studios the size of Bohemia Interactive it's extremely common to have placeholder animations that keep getting refined over time. 'It never happens in videogame development that the developers first develops amazing gameplay and then adds animation later'. Of course I can't speak for Bohemia Interactive but I find this extremely unlikely. It might be the case that BI trust their own ARMA formula enough by now that they can develop animations and gameplay in tandem. Knowing that their type of gameplay is a winning formula. However, in general you always design a game around gameplay first. Even if that means your game character is still just a placeholder box. 'animations once made never get better' - again, a really bad take. BI clearly use motion capture. Setting up animation rigs for 3d modelled characters is a LOT of work but once this is all set up correctly, adding in more captured animations and transferring these onto the character rig is fairly straightforward and easy. (especially in a studio that should be well used to this workflow by now). Love your videos. We clearly share the same opinion that realistic gameplay can also be 'fun' gameplay. but I just had to comment here.

[@doltBmB]

nah, we all have experience with this kind of thing, improvements can happen after the fact, but it very, very, very, very, very rarely does.

[@UEemperor]

What i think he means to convey, is that studios rarely improve their stuff after that "eeeeh fuck it, gud nuff" point, and it usually ends with games cutting way too many corners in areas that matter. And i do agree with his disagreement over the mortars. I would wanna do away with any kind of UI/ez mode control. Id rather take the time to set everything up manually and "see" the action come to life. This is especially true if someone wants to "main" this part of the game, to focus on their role being a mortarman, theyll spend most of their time doing that, so it would be nice to see it fully animated, again, to come to life! (I know you did not disagree on this part, but i do believe that, sadly, many studios do cut those corners a bit too sharp)

[@coenvancamp1976]

@@UEemperor Some examples then? Just now Squad has completely redone a lot of their animations and movement system and that game has been out for a long, long while. Everyday we see games with more and more animation states and quality, not less. Of course there are some lazy game-developers. But in general the quality bar of games, especially in the animation department, keeps getting better and better. I think you're allowing a few bad examples to shape your judgement over what is actually a constant industry-wide upward improvement. I think people don't realize that the more realistic and finessed games get, the more obvious a few small bad things are. ARMA Reforger is such a jump forward in terms of graphics and animations. Yet everyone gets more and more nitpicky. This channel usually gives very thorough constructive feedback. However, this particular video seems to suggest that most developers are lazy. Trust me, the overwhelming majority are really NOT.

[@UEemperor]

@@coenvancamp1976 I do not agree with that. Just because you have a minor increase across the board, doesnt mean that we are doing well. Theres an upward improvement, but its a trickle. There are a LOT of games that forgo animations and stick to UI, dont consider removing UI and physicalizing the mechanics, and generally handle animations as a "look at this cool reload on this gun thats been done so many times before" or "we now have dangling trinkets on our guns and cloth physics" vanity project than actually putting them into gameplay. And just so we dont misunderstand here: Arma reforger IS quality work in terms of animations, and this is what this video is about; the level of quality must be maintained! Also, on the last point: Yes, ofc developers are not lazy, it takes a lot of work to make all of this, but when you got games that fail to bring that feel almost constantly (in milsim/tactical genere at least), its quite alarming to see something like what the vid pointed out.

[@f1l603]

As an actual dev working in mocap and animations, I can 100% guarantee you, if you have enough animators, they will perfect it. If you have too few animators (which usually is the case) and far too many jira tickets, asks or what ever, you ship "good enough" until you can pick up at a later date, if it is deemed important enough. It all comes down to priority and vision, and closing doors is nowhere near important as reloading your gun. Making games are iterative, as is why we have testing branches for AR.

[@tycandappa9829]

Totally agree, also felt a little bit confused and let down when the armored vehicle optics weren't 3D either. This should absolutely be the standard for ARMA: Reforger and ARMA 4!!

[@fennoman9241]

What about "experimental" is confusing?

[@tycandappa9829]

@@fennoman9241 jeez... I was just saying.... o.0

[@majorborngusfluunduch8694]

​@@fennoman9241The problem plagues the BTR-70 as well and thats been in the game since the start. "Experimental" would have been the ideal place add LAVs and BRDMs with functional optics before rolling the feature down to the BTR.

[@screech161]

what does 3d optics mean?

[@cowboy6524]

I’m not worried about it. A working game and sound are the most important animations can be added later and in my opinion is such a small meaningless thing to complain about because in my mind it all adds to the immersion and while that’s important you can’t priories that over actaul functional gameplay. People complain about everything it really feels like no matter how hard a company tries they always fail expectations even if the game itself is super fun. I love this game and I do want more animation but it’s not the defining fact of this game I don’t play the game because of the cool animation I play it for the large open world large scale fighting

[@UEemperor]

The point is that focusing on making systems/mechanics feel PHYSICAL will add a lot more gameplay implications, otherwise things such as magic UI indicators, ammo counters and other will just cheapen the game. Thing about the ammo thing for a sec: Why would you spend time animating a "check magazine ammo count" action? Its not a point of immersion, it seeps into gameplay decisions: 1) Taking the mag out of the gun to check it is a conscious decision, you have to do it when you dont need to shoot. Maybe better to just reload. 2) You have to be mindful of the amount of mags you spend because you cant see a X (mags remaining) UI on the screen. 3) You wont know what ammo is in a gun unless you check your chamber or mag. There wont be a "ITS X AMMO" UI indicator. All of these are obviously not as important as, say, a robust health and armour system, or server performance bla bla, but they are certainly an important part of the process that game devs simply never care to work on. In fact its the opposite, nowdays devs fail to deliver on so many SIMPLE TRIED AND TESTED mechanics that its baffling how they manage to make games that net them a profit....

[@oceanichelicopter4240]

"if you play reforger the compass doesnt matter" "You dont need a compass because the map tells you, you are in this vicinity of this area, and i can see the position of the sun, so i know precisely the direction im looking in degress" 🤣🤣

[@InterfectorII]

Animations take a lot of time to do, so it is understandable that they prioritize other things at the moment. In the long term they really should make those!

[@Deemi2920]

You see what alot of people fail to realize is most developers prioritize playability over realism. Its obvious that Bohemia interactive is taking the playability approach, letting new players jump into the game without having to learn an entire field manual by heart on how to operate anything and everything. I can tell you myself, i love realistic games however i think the reason why i like arma reforger more than arma 3 is because reforger is just so much more simple to understand without having to have a PHD in anything.

[@hellcatdave1]

Land nav in Reforger is far harder than it ever has been in A3. A3 provides you infinitely more tools, and most importantly a GPS almost always.

[@JacobN-hg8tv]

Im a huge fun of your takes on these issues, really awesome work

[@trivixni435]

sooo true, one thing i loved about reforger was the animations, if they start lacking it then they will be another arma 3, not arma 4, just a copy

[@fennoman9241]

Its a thing called "experimental" and not live release.

[@Un1tMedia]

I think Caracal should open his own game studio 😂

[@Spiderwolfer]

I completely agree. What also concerns me is they didn’t put in the effort to make the game stable enough to release the experimental branch onto Xbox as they have with every other previous update. From what I’ve heard it’s not even that unstable so they probably didn’t even put in the effort to test if it was. Extremely disappointing.

[@dubmeisterxd2133]

I 100% agree, I think that there is no excuse. Compared to squad, fidelity is really the only thing that reforger does better, and with how slow the development cycle is I really expect them to be putting the maximum amount of effort into animation quality. instead they have 'gameified' reforger and it honestly makes me worried for arma 4.

[@caracal3892]

I think refrogger has huge potential for intricate crew-served systems to be more animated.

[@cowboy6524]

Dude then go play squad I think the community is always the biggest problem they want more and more and never appreciate what they have. It’s literal animation. If these were good then you’d just find something else to complain about this is why games are no longer fun. Because developer are so worried about the small stuff so they take people away from other parts of the project and intern causes delays and buggie mess. Also this isn’t 2010 anymore you can totally make gameplay then add animations. Mods do it squad has revisited it animation hell squad will go back and revamp its faction from time time so this isn’t a valid argument.

[@mathieutrautman8634]

Yeah def agree. Reforger is just so much more polished then squad. But honestly squad is so jank they could put in a quarter of the work and it would still be much better.

[@command_unit7792]

The thing I really like anout Mortars being added is that Buhankas will suddenly be everywhere if they are allowed to carry mortars

[@command_unit7792]

The scoped view is functionally mostly pointless for mortars(unless you are using it for training or using it for close range fire) its usually used as an indirect fire system(unless you want to check what you dialed in is correct). And this is how its mostly used in Arma Reforger(you should be able to dial the mortar out of scope but you can only find out you did it correctly by scoping in) I think this is the best compromise personally(mostly because doing calculations is above most players pay grade)

[@caracal3892]

I think the aiming device and the dials should be animated still. And I do not see the current thing as a compromise, it is the bottom end of fidelity. The only way to make aiming any easier would be arma3 point and click on map.

[@command_unit7792]

@@caracal3892 Its a decent balance between realism and still being user friendly...sadly I think the current model they have is the most realistic they can get away with without making the skill level required to operate a mortar be too high.

[@UEemperor]

@@command_unit7792 But this is a game whose standard is (meant) to be above the common arcady game. So it SHOULD need proper operation as its aim, calculations and all. And if you dont like it, mods can make it easier, so i do not see the problem to aim for a high quality standard.

[@lukasschmidt2478]

If you make it tedious to get a firing solution, it might become to great an encouragement for players to use external artillery calculators on their computer, forcing everyone to do it to be competitive. Of course you don't wanna put aim and wall hacks into the game to even the playing field against cheaters, but perhaps you do with grey zone situations like this.

[@lukasschmidt2478]

It would still be good to have the proper setup in the game though.

[@UEemperor]

That would happen anyway. Dude squad has shit easy mortars, and yet people use mortar calculators because they cant be bothered to correlate their settings and SL's marker....(SL marker can give distance, so all you need is to match it) Id rather have a cool system that i can see it come to life, than just a point and click system thats gonna see me looking at a static picture (im talking about player just standing there like in arma 3)

[@Nutter-l3s]

Amazing points, animations make the game!

[@South2TheWorld]

Where do we complain, I really want the best for this game and specifically the genre it is, I don't want it tobecome like battlefield or cod

[@caracal3892]

I would do it anywhere where the devs watch. Forums, discord, the devs also sometimes watch my videos so perhaps they read the comments.

[@South2TheWorld]

@caracal3892 Thanks for posting these videos. HAPPY FESTIVE SEASON!!!!

[@hansenhenry5438]

I usually really agree with your takes but not so much on this. This is experimental and I'm sure we're going to see improvements with everything. Their newest update had so many bug fixes it's clear they care about making the game as perfect as possible

[@caracal3892]

The new experimental patch they added later on this day adds a lot of nice new animations so I that is nice. However I still feel that more things should be animated

[@command_unit7792]

The info on the grid where you are located is realistic because any deployed soldier would have been informed about his general location he is deployed in.

[@caracal3892]

There should be a marker when you spawn that shows your start point, however it should not be something that dynamically updates. In the coop scenarios I think the game uses markers that only mark your spawn.

[@command_unit7792]

@caracal3892 Its still vague and the description only helps you orientate yourself if you find the name it shows on the map.. if you want players to find road signs to orient themselves I would expect a lot more players just getting lost for hours wasting time when they can play the game...there is a point where realism is just not workable especially if the games are somewhat shorter.(Finding the grid square you are located in is honestly not that bad of a tip assuming your soldier learned some of the landmarks before hand and has some knowlage of the location he got deployed in)

[@maxparkinson]

@@caracal3892the game marks your deployment position (where you spawned)

[@UEemperor]

@@command_unit7792 Not every game has to be a braindead plug and play. On the contrary, this is a game where people can LEARN and IMPROVE themselves, WHILE playing. It was a fun thing back in arma 2 where you had no idea where you were going, found a sign that half read (if you cant read cyrillic) the town you wanted to be in, and you found your way from there. That IS part of the fun. And if you dont care to do it? Search for a video guide, or search for a mod and play with the buddies that want the same. But if thats the case id rather go play squad or some other arcady equivalent to pass the time with more action.

[@colt1596]

Yes, obv ps5 will get those updates. Its buggy and horrible screen tears right now. For me

[@MrStrider28]

Would be cool to have realistic artillery from arma 3 (modded)

[@ronnytotten9292]

This is such a ridiculous thing to nitpick..

[@spuqe69]

My theory is that they are trying to make the game not so hard for the ps 5 players and kids who play other shooter games which are not realistic as arma, which kinda sucks since it they don't ever do supply runs but take a car for them selfs, go to a point alone, die and get frustatred that they didn't get to go rambo style against the enemy with their backpack full of mags and medic items and granades😂 Seen it too many times.

[@hellcatdave1]

They have not changed a single thing for PS5 players from the Xbox and PC versions. They all work exactly the same. There have always been SL marks on the map, always had the rough approx position on the map, etc.

[@doltBmB]

consoles consoles happened this game has had severe consolitis from day 1 just accept that A2 will be the last truly realistic shooter they ever make, and very likely the last that anyone will ever make

[@majorborngusfluunduch8694]

It can't be "consolitis" you idiot. Arma 3 didn't come out on consoles. Since you went back to Arma 2, what's the excuse for Arma 3 being less realistic?

[@JayTheXXVII]

Enjoy what they make, dont be upset at what they didnt