Exciting times are ahead for Arma 3 and it's upcoming developments + DLC. I thought I'd make a post consolidating some of this information for the community to read (and for those that don't always follow Arma's news updates).
Arma 3 Roadmap
As we can see from the image above, feedback tracker changes and stability/optimisation is top of BI's list for updates. Considering it's been about 9 months since release (and over a year since the Alpha), I can't help but think "it's about damn time". Either way, this is good news for everyone - maybe one day we'll be able to hold out a firefight in Kavala (Altis) with more than just 2 Klawces!
Downloadable ContentBefore we start discussing what each DLC will bring, I just want to make a note of BI's
"features are free, premium content is paid" philosophy. This means that any
features released in DLCs and updates will be
free for everyone. The content, however, will still be a
paid premium. With that said, BI has come up with an interesting way to split the divide between those that have DLC, and those that don't. In short, all DLC will essentially be
free for everyone (including content). DLC won't be compressed or offer 'lite' versions (like in Arma 2), but instead
everyone will have all content at its highest quality.
The only drawback is that the game will bug you every now and then, asking you to buy the DLC (but only if you use the DLC content, such as one of the Helicopter vehicles). My advice would be to just buy the DLC bundle now. It will set you back £16.99, but I'd say it's worth it - it's more than likely we're going to be using this content in the future for our missions. Here's more details on the pricing:
If you were silly enough to spend the money on the Supporter Edition (like me), you'll also get access to the Expansion without surcharge. Also, unlike in Arma 2: Operation Arrowhead, the Expansion won't be a standalone game - it will build on top of Arma 3.
Moving on to the DLC, there are two major upcoming DLC packs coming to Arma 3:
Helicopters
Not only will this pack add new transport helicopters to the game, it will also add completely new flight models to
all vanilla helicopters as well. Much of the new dynamics are said to be influenced heavily by
Take On Helicopters. The best part? These features will be completely free for everyone (remember - "features are free, premium content is paid"), so we'll all be able to enjoy the new flight models. Here's a quote from one of the devs:
RoyaltyinExile wrote:
The flight model is part of a free platform update, along with new XMLs for each helicopter (i.e. not just the new ones). We intend to release this functionality to dev-branch ahead of the official release of the DLC.
Along with flight models, the Helicopters DLC will also bring logistics (
Sling Loading) and the ability to
Fire from Vehicles (yes, you heard me right). Both features are apparently engine based and will of course be completely MP-compatible. Maybe we'll also be able to walk around inside some of these new vehicles while in-flight?
Marksman
We haven't been told many specifics yet, but it seems that the Marksmen DLC will overhaul some of the shooting mechanics and make it much more challenging to fire a weapon. I guess we can hope for proper wind ballistics and the ability to adjust your weapon's scope to counter for windage, but this is pure speculation.
In other news it looks like there has been a lot of development on Arma 3's AI. A lot of work is underway on the dev branch, but some of these improvements have already been pushed to the stable build. In fact, Frosty and I found out that our public server hasn't actually been running bCombat or any other AI mods. Although we did think the AI were a bit 'different', we had no idea that we were up against vanilla AI. We will be putting bCombat back on for now, but perhaps in the future we might be able to run our servers without any AI mods.
Well, that about raps up this update. I may do more of these in the future (for significant developments such as Arma 3 news, mod news, or even RL army-related news) when I get more time and depending on what people think.
Keep up the good work Marines!
Goodson