ArmA 3 has more players than RO2...

[Fedorov]

TWI's motto has been that making the game more accessible will bring in more players.

So why is it that a game as inaccessible that runs like crap, like ArmA3, has so many more players than RO2?

Not trolling, just honest question.

 

[Lemonater47]

Modern combat is a more popular genre.
Arma 3 has lots of bat **** crazy mods as well and other more which expand the game.
Arma 3 is newer.
Arma 3 has a large youtube following.
Arma 3 is semi open world
Arma 3 is Arma 3
Dayz helped a lot
$60 game = good quality in many peoples minds
Arma 3 is really a different style of game to RO2.


However RO2 has sold about 500,000 more copies than Arma 3.

 

[Fedorov]

Modern combat is a more popular genre.

Insurgency is similar to RO in modern combat and has less players.

Arma 3 has lots of bat **** crazy mods as well and other more which expand the game.[/QUOTE]

Good reason, but is the modding scene really that big?

Arma 3 is newer.

Not a valid reason since its player base is maintaining and maybe even growing since launch, while RO2 is slowly decaying. Insurgency is also newer than both.

Arma 3 has a large youtube following.

Why is that?

Arma 3 is semi open world

Yeah thats one advantage, but so are many other games that are not being played that much.

Arma 3 is Arma 3

filler reason?

Dayz helped a lot

Yes, but that was for ARMA2.

$60 game = good quality in many peoples minds

But why do they stick with it and they don't stick with RO2?

Arma 3 is really a different style of game to RO2.

Yes, and it is further apart from CoD than RO2 is.

However RO2 has sold about 500,000 more copies than Arma 3.

RO2 has been sold for free with ridiculous prices and humble bundles. it doesnt matter the units sold if the game is not being played


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I think is not that easy to find an answer.

 

[PsychoPigeon]

Arma has the life rpg mod, copy cat dayz mods, this is what people play on there. Vanilla arma has less players than RO2. Easy enough to load up the game and see for yourself - 20 servers all full playing life rpg et al.

 

[LugNut]

A3 has lots of mods, some rpgs, some that fix/expand the base game and still a good amount of vanilla servers. It's always been a community that embraces modding. It's also a more complex environment, so for many, it's replayabilty is good even though as a standard MP fps, it's weak.

I don't know the numbers and can't be bothered to look quite frankly, but since the OP didn't specify vanilla A3 vs RO2, why would it matter? And it's amusing the guys who are dispariging its mods as not counting are modders.....

 

[PsychoPigeon]

but since the OP didn't specify vanilla A3 vs RO2, why would it matter?

Because he asked why it had more players if arma is meant to be a more inaccessible game, so it's important to clarify the majority of players don't touch the base game and instead play the RPG mods where they can just jump in and play in a big open world (in effect bypassing the more inaccessible gameplay), not saying the mods are bad or disparaging them as you claim on the contrary the DayZ mod brought in millions of players and catapulted the arma series into a place it would never be otherwise. I'm Just clarifying for the OP where the population goes and that the milisim crowd is tiny in comparison and certainly not propping up the game like the OP suggests. Again, load up the game and see for yourself instead of speculating. I buy every arma game and unless you're in a clan your choices for a good coop game are limited to 2-3 populated servers if that.

 

[Lemonater47]

Down in the oceanic region I'm more likely to find a game of project reality for BF2 than a vanilla arma 3 game. Not to mention you pretty much have to be in a clan to do anything. In project reality you can join a pub and still be super serious. With 100 man servers. And then there's RO2 when I can always find a game.

Operation flashpoint its split off rival died. It has superior gunplay and superior singleplayer. As well as being in general smoother and being more polished. It died because of the lack of mods and then Operation Flashpoint: Red River killed off the multiplayer and it had games for windows live. Operation Flashpoint: dragon rising multiplayer was fun and the singleplayer not bad. Red river improved on its features with the biggest flaw in its campaign your squad leader being literally the most annoying video game character of all time. The multiplayer was reduced to 4 player coop. While fun to do its the only thing you can do. If red river had kept or improved from its multiplayer in dragon rising Operation flashpoint could have still be arma's competitor. Operation flashpoint having comprehensive modding tools would have meant it would have surpassed arma in popularity. Because of its ease of use and greater polish without the chunkiness of arma.


Arma is the only game in its niche. Arma and Operation flashpoint used to be the same game. Both game from the same original.

 

[hockeywarrior]

I think ultimately, the developers of ARMA 3 take a much more long term and community-minded approach to development. Even though I agree that while ARMA has been pretty poorly optimized, ARMA 3 is much better in this regard and has improved greatly since its release -- especially when it comes to shooting mechanics.

Ultimately their devs and the community have stuck with the game and are committed to improving it. While RO2 has improved somewhat since release, there are key tenants to the game that haven't ... especially gameplay elements that many people including myself find broken. That and the fact that players have seen a complete drop off in content and patches to the game doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the game's future.

Then you factor in the much better coop experience, large maps, and vibrant modding community that has complete support from the devs, and you have a booming community. I don't really think it's that complicated to be honest.

 

[Rak]

As others said, nobody plays vanilla ArmA 3. 90% of the players are playing silly casual RPG mods like ArmA 3 Life or PvP mods like Wasteland and Battle Royale. Just visiting the Twitch Arma 3 section will give you an idea.

You'll hardly find a server that's playing the game in a true Red vs Blue realistic modern warfare fashion. Just look up how TacBF is doing, they can hardly fill half a server during the evenings.

 

[LugNut]

You'll hardly find a server that's playing the game in a true Red vs Blue realistic modern warfare fashion.

That's because A3 and A2 as well, pretty much suck at PvP. It never has nor ever will be a decent PvP game. TB is cool, but so was ARMA-PR, and that croaked as well, because the engine is crap for it. Plus, ARMA always quickly turns into a key bind memorization metagame, that most people just won't put up with.

The vanilla game has always been set up for COOP. I don't have any problem finding plenty of populated COOP servers running stock settings. Nowhere near the popularity of the stupid rpgs or King of the Hill servers of course, that's where the 12 year olds are.

And obviously, any game that allows modding and any community that embraces it will have different life cycles than those that don't, those that release a "new" game every year. Can you imagine if RO2 or ARMA didn't release their SDK? Would they even exist after a year or two?

The fact is that there is a healthy population of players worldwide that like to play fps games that are in that semi-sim range, fans of "realism", however you want to define it. They will bounce around from game to game, or stick with one, but a new game like Squad or if FE ever sees the light of day, won't really create new players, it'll just steal from other games. I see it in Squad these days, yeah likely some new to that sort of gameplay, but mostly players and clans from A3/PR/Insurgency/RO2 etc.

The herd will stay about the same size with births = deaths, just the pastures will change.

 

[Tomcat_ha]

we all know RO2 fell flat on its face clan wise right during launch. That is a very major reason why RO2 never got as big as it could have been. The competitive scene was what kept RO1 alive for as long as it did. I mean we managed to hold a farewell tournament 4 years just before the release of RO2. How many games that sold as many as RO1 could have managed that?

 

[kapulA]

The herd will stay about the same size with births = deaths, just the pastures will change.

Ah, the epic odyssey of the majestic casual realism gamer flock.

 

[Cyper]

- The game has lots of content in terms of weapons, vehicles and aircraft.

- The game is getting constant updates and support.

- The devs very carefully listen to suggestions and change the game according to wishes on the BIforums. For example, a completely new fatiguesystem never seen before was adopted recently.

- New content is getting released by the community all the time: missions, campaigns, maps, vehicles weapons.

- It is very modding friendly. It is easy and quick to create and modify the game.

- New content is getting released by the community all the time: missions, campaigns, maps, vehicles weapons.

Regarding accessibility and DayZ. DayZ is just a filler. Arma is not popular because of DayZ. Arma has been around since 2001 and been growing since.
The franchise has kept its formula since 2001 game ARMA: Cold war assault and constantly improved on it. Meaning, that the most experienced people are still in the community, and the developers knows exactly where to aim with the game and the audience know where the bullet will be placed... its very easy to know how an arma game will be - and in what genre.