What's wrong with the Army game being different? What's the draw to this game if it's the same as the others? Wouldn't it just be easier to go play those games, then?
Valid point... Personally, if you had 10 beers to chose from and they all taste the same, you'd go with the cheapest. The problem is that AAPG *MAY* not be the cheapest when in comes to investment in time and energy.
If you create something completely different, like say an Extra Special Bitter (ESB), which is a unique style of beer, then is becomes up to marketing and convincing people that this unique product is worth the effort to try. AA2 was that Extra Special Battle
AA3 and AAPG tried to replicate and borrow from other games that were popular without having the vision to bifurcate the product into something unique.
Most here want AAV to be "more of the same" (i.e. clones of other games) while trying to make it unique. This should NOT happen.
AAV is a new subject and AAPG should have little to do with design. You can probably take lessons learned and that is all.
If you want something completely unique, make AAV a complete Military Sim. The problem is that people won't play it because a "real" bullet into a "real" body part would cause the pawn to drop immediately, resulting in a MUCH slower game play as people would place strategy and tactics over "run-n-gun". I recently spoke to an AAPG player (veteran) who was shot in the hand while serving overseas (Afghanistan I believe). He can play the game, but he stated is was very difficult because of his injury (no feeling / limited motion)... Reality would be great, but the current generation of players would not be able to focus long enough to play a single round, which might take an hour.
OIC!
--
In life, there is no respawn... why should there be in a game?
Reality would be great, but the current generation of players would not be able to focus long enough to play a single round, which might take an hour.
OIC!
Why even limit this to the current generation of gamer? Sure, 15+ years ago we had more patience for long rounds (kind of), but even then people used to get impatient with long rounds. I remember countless times in the original AA where guys got kicked for sitting around doing nothing when people were dead.
You joined the world's greatest army to become a graphic artist? Outstanding!
Good discussion, respectful with positive, productive critique.
So, if everyone has the same movement speed and "it was made for people who can't shoot" who does slow movement speed really 'advantage?'
I'd say it advantages the GOOD players, not the bad ones. Is that the low skill ceiling?
But...what would speeding the movement up do to the poor players? I'd say it would annihilate them even still. Why? They can't adapt. Good players can.
______
This has been a test of the emergency flame-fest system. Please do not adjust your set.
As for strictly mil sim...
...maintaining "game"...
AA3 was a good hybrid of sim/game, unique with the med/damage system. It didn't sell well because of the bugs. Plenty of previous gen AA folks didn't care for the med/damage system in AA3 and those folks would have never supported it, but plenty enjoyed the hybrid game. People still play it (https://steamcharts.com/app/13140) and it had a download base between 500k and 1 million (https://steamdb.info/app/13140/graphs/) . It wasn't something that would have brought back the AA2 fan base, but it would be interesting to see how it would have fair'd without all the broken limbs throughout the life of the game. The majority of the development time spent on AA3 was fixing the game. What would it have been like had the content been updated and those "coming soon" features added?
AA2 was unique for the in-depth weapons, mods, training, and mil sim/game hybrid.
AAPG is strictly a game. There isn't much mil sim to it at all.
Good discussion, respectful with positive, productive critique.
So, if everyone has the same movement speed and "it was made for people who can't shoot" who does slow movement speed really 'advantage?'
I'd say it advantages the GOOD players, not the bad ones. Is that the low skill ceiling?
But...what would speeding the movement up do to the poor players? I'd say it would annihilate them even still. Why? They can't adapt. Good players can.
It's all relative. The faster speeds would spread out the skill curve more. It would be harder to be at that higher tier vs. how it is now. I guess you could say that players who are poor now would be even worse. However, the game also isn't a super high speed game to begin with. There'd still be plenty of instances where people stand still behind cover. I don't think we need to really bump the player speed by that much, it's not like we're talking about having Quake type movement speeds.
You joined the world's greatest army to become a graphic artist? Outstanding!
In general faster moving targets are harder to hit but I doubt it will be an issue, were not about to make run the new walk speed.
Like Director mentioned its the walk speed that is so painfully slow and if f you think about it, if it were faster people might not need to run as often so technically the game would slow down.
Besides like with everything else there needs to be a ballance, so faster movement is ballance with complete silent tactical walk and possibly larger cone or recoil coming from a sprint.
This is the U.S. Army's game jets. Up that ladder the man in charge gave the orders and the Devs did what they were told to do. Even if they have said hey we can do it like this and that. The top dog said we want the game like this.
I agree that some changes would be awesome. I too miss AA2 and the guns, maps and community. I can say that I love some other things that are in other games that would be awesome if it were in AAPG. But I don't see them being changed so late in the game. However AA5 now this is the whole point of this topic. So if some of these ideas that you guys come up with get incorporated into the next AA game in the series (if we even get another game) I thing that it would be awesome.
Personally the more guns, maps and functions the better. Dropping all weapons and nades or a few tanks. Larger missions and maps. Arena modes for comps. Mission Editor and co-ops for new player or player that would rather play against the machines. Also kill screen. These are all things I would like to see. However even if we get all of these things in the package there will have to be something to stand out as the U.S. Army's Game.
That Top Dog better get used to a game played by 300 people, I guess he should be by now anyways after AA3 and PG. If there is no communication between players and Devs regarding AAV its as good as dead already!
So far the game is a huge success. It has just died down on PC. The fact is that PC gaming is dying, I have played many games for pc and xbox. There is so many more players and servers on xbox and PS4 in compare to PC. Plus this game is old to us. A lot of us have been here for 10 years or more. So when we see what we had in say aa2 and compare it to now we feel robbed and disappointed. I am with you guys completely. I would love to see the PC community get huge again. But I have also noticed that we are getting a lot more new players. I am hoping they are from PS4 and they are hearing that there is more content in PC and joining that way. It would be great if the PS4 had a load up screen or a video that did show these players that are on PS4 what the extras are on PC like new maps and M/E. My bud from work did not know and I told him to download it for his PS4 and he loves it. Now he is on PC trying to lean how to use M/E and trying it out. However he can not believe his eyes on the steam list of maps.
But from what he said, these was nothing advertising what was on the PC version of the game sept from word of mouth.
Our definitions of huge success must differ. Based on the recent numbers we've seen on PS4, they wouldn't even sniff the top 100 games on Steam. Is the PS4 version more popular? Sure. Maybe the Army considers that successful, so be it. However, I consider a game that can average a concurrent 20K+ players successful, not less than 2K. A well made AA game can easily achieve those numbers. I think that even shooting for PS4 type numbers is a loser mentality. This game has a pretty big base waiting for a return to form and will come back. That in itself gives you a good starting point for where it can go.
You joined the world's greatest army to become a graphic artist? Outstanding!
Yeah Im with Whip on the numbers and success or lack of regarding this series.
PC games are not lacking... There are enough people playing to go around for many games. AA is free! We should be miles ahead of where we are but people try it and dont come back.
We need a product that finally peeks peoples interest, grabs them by the balls and holds on tight. You know what does that? A higher skill ceiling game, because its not boring and theres something to strive for. A huge chunk missing from todays game.
It's quite interesting to compare it with today's issues. There's actually someone saying "i almost fall into sleep between rounds...:p"
This bit "I just heard about this game today on the News. I don't know if this will really have any affect on recruiting young men into the US Army though. But from what I saw on the tele it looked graphically "decent". $6 Million they spent on it, so hopefully it wasn't all taxpayer money down the drain."
caught my attention tho.
It's quite interesting to compare it with today's issues. There's actually someone saying "i almost fall into sleep between rounds...:p"
This bit "I just heard about this game today on the News. I don't know if this will really have any affect on recruiting young men into the US Army though. But from what I saw on the tele it looked graphically "decent". $6 Million they spent on it, so hopefully it wasn't all taxpayer money down the drain."
caught my attention tho.
To be fair, the guy also said he hated CS for the same reason. Back in 2002 CS rounds weren't as short as they are now, but they were still shorter than AA where maps with 7 or even 10 minute rounds were the norm. The guy just seemed to generally hate round based shooters. Also, back in 2002 in terms of round based shooters, CS was really the only game in town. It was a time where games were mostly respawn based or deathmatch.
You joined the world's greatest army to become a graphic artist? Outstanding!
The PC version of AAPG was available worldwide on Steam.. Them PS4 numbers are primarily for North America.. since they are the only people able to even see the game in the PS store. Yeah maybe there are a few region changing stragglers from ROW here and there thrown in, but for a free game released only in NA, are them numbers really that bad?
My question is rather.. should we as PC players be worried about AAPG or any version of AA being too successful on console? I mean, they could potentially see PC as a money sink.. a lost cause. Consoles are getting more and more powerful and cost a fraction of a decent PC.. I wonder how many of today's young gamers are even interested in PC's?
It's one thing to look at our age demographics, we've grown older along with AA/2/3.. and we are all biased one way or another, we might look at AA and how we believe it should be through older, very different eyes than a 14-17 year old kid who's never even seen or heard of any AA titles before would.
Afterall, they are the target guys.. not us old farts armed with years of experience.. stories of good times and long lasting friendships.. no, not us, them. Always bear that in mind.
If my trollery drives you crazy, you'd better put on your seatbelt.
I wonder how many of today's young gamers are even interested in PC's?
Fortnite is your answer. Do you know how many millions of millions of people are playing fortnite on PC? Games like CS and COD are still loaded with younger kids. The market for PC gaming is better than it has ever been. FPS on console is vastly inferior and any serious gamer knows it.
You joined the world's greatest army to become a graphic artist? Outstanding!
Our definitions of huge success must differ. Based on the recent numbers we've seen on PS4, they wouldn't even sniff the top 100 games on Steam. Is the PS4 version more popular? Sure. Maybe the Army considers that successful, so be it. However, I consider a game that can average a concurrent 20K+ players successful, not less than 2K. A well made AA game can easily achieve those numbers. I think that even shooting for PS4 type numbers is a loser mentality. This game has a pretty big base waiting for a return to form and will come back. That in itself gives you a good starting point for where it can go.
With all due respect Whipy... huge success can sometimes be easy to define. That said, I *WILL* agree that recent success has been difficult to attain.
Our definitions of huge success must differ. Based on the recent numbers we've seen on PS4, they wouldn't even sniff the top 100 games on Steam. Is the PS4 version more popular? Sure. Maybe the Army considers that successful, so be it. However, I consider a game that can average a concurrent 20K+ players successful, not less than 2K. A well made AA game can easily achieve those numbers. I think that even shooting for PS4 type numbers is a loser mentality. This game has a pretty big base waiting for a return to form and will come back. That in itself gives you a good starting point for where it can go.
With all due respect Whipy... huge success can sometimes be easy to define. That said, I *WILL* agree that recent success has been difficult to attain.
Those figures are why the bill keeps getting paid, and why whoever is running the show doesn't get fired. They are grossly misleading, tricking the reader of the article into believing inflated numbers. That's the kind of stuff we use on our performance reports.
-9.7 million soldiers in game!
-42 million copies downloaded!
-230 million hours played!
....
-400 average active players!
I realize it's talking about AA2. But it's the same principle keeping the AA series around. Fake, misleading numbers.
I could set the Guinness Book of World Record for the person whose name starts with do and ends with ogle for over 5 categories of made up stuff.
I agree, total downloads is a very misleading statistic. The only thing total downloads should be used for is to compare how many downloads vs. active users. AAPG has about 2M downloads and yet averaged 1K+ and peaked at 2K+ players for only a single month (the full release). Arma 3 has 2M downloads and currently averages over 13K players and peaks around 27K.
I can have 50M downloads and if no one sticks around it says that there's something about your game that that gamers don't like. I know people who are still around here love AAPG, I enjoy it too, but that doesn't mean that the game doesn't need or couldn't stand to have major improvements made. Assuming that everyone who downloaded the game installed it and tried it, that means that even in spite of lack of advertising, as many people tried AAPG as did Arma 3. Why does Arma 3 continue to enjoy a sizable player base while AAPG doesn't?
The development team should not accept having a nearly non-existent player base as being normal. The development team should do whatever it takes to make sure that the next version of the game has player numbers that are more in line with other popular FPS games.
If I were a developer I know that I would not be happy if AAV only managed a meager 1K or 2K players when I see the kinds of numbers that other games can manage, not even just talking about the ones that are worldwide phenomenons (Fortnite, PUBG, CS, etc.)
You joined the world's greatest army to become a graphic artist? Outstanding!
Comments
Valid point... Personally, if you had 10 beers to chose from and they all taste the same, you'd go with the cheapest. The problem is that AAPG *MAY* not be the cheapest when in comes to investment in time and energy.
If you create something completely different, like say an Extra Special Bitter (ESB), which is a unique style of beer, then is becomes up to marketing and convincing people that this unique product is worth the effort to try. AA2 was that Extra Special Battle
AA3 and AAPG tried to replicate and borrow from other games that were popular without having the vision to bifurcate the product into something unique.
Most here want AAV to be "more of the same" (i.e. clones of other games) while trying to make it unique. This should NOT happen.
As .!.dgodfather stated :
If you want something completely unique, make AAV a complete Military Sim. The problem is that people won't play it because a "real" bullet into a "real" body part would cause the pawn to drop immediately, resulting in a MUCH slower game play as people would place strategy and tactics over "run-n-gun". I recently spoke to an AAPG player (veteran) who was shot in the hand while serving overseas (Afghanistan I believe). He can play the game, but he stated is was very difficult because of his injury (no feeling / limited motion)... Reality would be great, but the current generation of players would not be able to focus long enough to play a single round, which might take an hour.
OIC!
In life, there is no respawn... why should there be in a game?
Why even limit this to the current generation of gamer? Sure, 15+ years ago we had more patience for long rounds (kind of), but even then people used to get impatient with long rounds. I remember countless times in the original AA where guys got kicked for sitting around doing nothing when people were dead.
So, if everyone has the same movement speed and "it was made for people who can't shoot" who does slow movement speed really 'advantage?'
I'd say it advantages the GOOD players, not the bad ones. Is that the low skill ceiling?
But...what would speeding the movement up do to the poor players? I'd say it would annihilate them even still. Why? They can't adapt. Good players can.
This has been a test of the emergency flame-fest system. Please do not adjust your set.
As for strictly mil sim...
...maintaining "game"...
AA3 was a good hybrid of sim/game, unique with the med/damage system. It didn't sell well because of the bugs. Plenty of previous gen AA folks didn't care for the med/damage system in AA3 and those folks would have never supported it, but plenty enjoyed the hybrid game. People still play it (https://steamcharts.com/app/13140) and it had a download base between 500k and 1 million (https://steamdb.info/app/13140/graphs/) . It wasn't something that would have brought back the AA2 fan base, but it would be interesting to see how it would have fair'd without all the broken limbs throughout the life of the game. The majority of the development time spent on AA3 was fixing the game. What would it have been like had the content been updated and those "coming soon" features added?
AA2 was unique for the in-depth weapons, mods, training, and mil sim/game hybrid.
AAPG is strictly a game. There isn't much mil sim to it at all.
I guess we need more mil sim variant in AAV?!?
Make AA Great Again!
This has been a test of the emergency flame-fest system. Please do not adjust your set.
It's all relative. The faster speeds would spread out the skill curve more. It would be harder to be at that higher tier vs. how it is now. I guess you could say that players who are poor now would be even worse. However, the game also isn't a super high speed game to begin with. There'd still be plenty of instances where people stand still behind cover. I don't think we need to really bump the player speed by that much, it's not like we're talking about having Quake type movement speeds.
Like Director mentioned its the walk speed that is so painfully slow and if f you think about it, if it were faster people might not need to run as often so technically the game would slow down.
Besides like with everything else there needs to be a ballance, so faster movement is ballance with complete silent tactical walk and possibly larger cone or recoil coming from a sprint.
#Support Comp Mode
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN4YhM6jUB2MxVj8i3b9rhw
I agree that some changes would be awesome. I too miss AA2 and the guns, maps and community. I can say that I love some other things that are in other games that would be awesome if it were in AAPG. But I don't see them being changed so late in the game. However AA5 now this is the whole point of this topic. So if some of these ideas that you guys come up with get incorporated into the next AA game in the series (if we even get another game) I thing that it would be awesome.
Personally the more guns, maps and functions the better. Dropping all weapons and nades or a few tanks. Larger missions and maps. Arena modes for comps. Mission Editor and co-ops for new player or player that would rather play against the machines. Also kill screen. These are all things I would like to see. However even if we get all of these things in the package there will have to be something to stand out as the U.S. Army's Game.
#Support Comp Mode
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN4YhM6jUB2MxVj8i3b9rhw
Make AA Great Again!
But from what he said, these was nothing advertising what was on the PC version of the game sept from word of mouth.
PC games are not lacking... There are enough people playing to go around for many games. AA is free! We should be miles ahead of where we are but people try it and dont come back.
We need a product that finally peeks peoples interest, grabs them by the balls and holds on tight. You know what does that? A higher skill ceiling game, because its not boring and theres something to strive for. A huge chunk missing from todays game.
#Support Comp Mode
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN4YhM6jUB2MxVj8i3b9rhw
https://www.techspot.com/community/topics/americas-army-recon-released-full-game.2018/
It's quite interesting to compare it with today's issues. There's actually someone saying "i almost fall into sleep between rounds...:p"
This bit "I just heard about this game today on the News. I don't know if this will really have any affect on recruiting young men into the US Army though. But from what I saw on the tele it looked graphically "decent". $6 Million they spent on it, so hopefully it wasn't all taxpayer money down the drain."
caught my attention tho.
To be fair, the guy also said he hated CS for the same reason. Back in 2002 CS rounds weren't as short as they are now, but they were still shorter than AA where maps with 7 or even 10 minute rounds were the norm. The guy just seemed to generally hate round based shooters. Also, back in 2002 in terms of round based shooters, CS was really the only game in town. It was a time where games were mostly respawn based or deathmatch.
The PC version of AAPG was available worldwide on Steam.. Them PS4 numbers are primarily for North America.. since they are the only people able to even see the game in the PS store. Yeah maybe there are a few region changing stragglers from ROW here and there thrown in, but for a free game released only in NA, are them numbers really that bad?
My question is rather.. should we as PC players be worried about AAPG or any version of AA being too successful on console? I mean, they could potentially see PC as a money sink.. a lost cause. Consoles are getting more and more powerful and cost a fraction of a decent PC.. I wonder how many of today's young gamers are even interested in PC's?
It's one thing to look at our age demographics, we've grown older along with AA/2/3.. and we are all biased one way or another, we might look at AA and how we believe it should be through older, very different eyes than a 14-17 year old kid who's never even seen or heard of any AA titles before would.
Afterall, they are the target guys.. not us old farts armed with years of experience.. stories of good times and long lasting friendships.. no, not us, them. Always bear that in mind.
Fortnite is your answer. Do you know how many millions of millions of people are playing fortnite on PC? Games like CS and COD are still loaded with younger kids. The market for PC gaming is better than it has ever been. FPS on console is vastly inferior and any serious gamer knows it.
With all due respect Whipy... huge success can sometimes be easy to define. That said, I *WILL* agree that recent success has been difficult to attain.
https://www.army.mil/article/16678/americas_army_game_sets_five_guinness_world_records
In life, there is no respawn... why should there be in a game?
Those figures are why the bill keeps getting paid, and why whoever is running the show doesn't get fired. They are grossly misleading, tricking the reader of the article into believing inflated numbers. That's the kind of stuff we use on our performance reports.
-9.7 million soldiers in game!
-42 million copies downloaded!
-230 million hours played!
....
-400 average active players!
I realize it's talking about AA2. But it's the same principle keeping the AA series around. Fake, misleading numbers.
I could set the Guinness Book of World Record for the person whose name starts with do and ends with ogle for over 5 categories of made up stuff.
I can have 50M downloads and if no one sticks around it says that there's something about your game that that gamers don't like. I know people who are still around here love AAPG, I enjoy it too, but that doesn't mean that the game doesn't need or couldn't stand to have major improvements made. Assuming that everyone who downloaded the game installed it and tried it, that means that even in spite of lack of advertising, as many people tried AAPG as did Arma 3. Why does Arma 3 continue to enjoy a sizable player base while AAPG doesn't?
The development team should not accept having a nearly non-existent player base as being normal. The development team should do whatever it takes to make sure that the next version of the game has player numbers that are more in line with other popular FPS games.
If I were a developer I know that I would not be happy if AAV only managed a meager 1K or 2K players when I see the kinds of numbers that other games can manage, not even just talking about the ones that are worldwide phenomenons (Fortnite, PUBG, CS, etc.)