Content

[Boxman80 352]

I thought I'd take the liberty of starting a fresh topic on this subject as I've seen a  few threads going off-topic to cover various points regarding additional content. When I'm talking content BTW, I think it's clear to establish what I'm talking about largely here is padding to the game, the large files that usually add physical in- game items  such as weapon and vehicle packs.  Additional features and scripts can probably be brought up too but I can't see them being nearly as much of a bone of contention given their minuscule size in comparison.  As there have been some very strong points both for and against the mod including additional content, I thought it warranted a discussion about how the community feels about additional content being built into the base mod. This also ties in nicely as a "break-out thread" from the suggestions thread I've made regarding some popular features and ideas fed back from the community here (http://exile.majormittens.co.uk/topic/835-improve-exile-a-wishlist-40-suggestions-growing/ )

 

I'm sure I've read here somewhere that the mods do intent do add content in the form of a couple of weapon and vehicle packs to expand in-game content and variety, but as a couple of people here seem to be oblivious to this and insist this is purely a server admin issue, I may be wrong.  


My personal opinion is though that the inclusion of a few good quality content mods to increase the amount of vehicles, weapons and possibly clothing is a good idea. Even more controversially, I would also extend that to possibly include maps.... I know right?!


ARMA 3 simply does not have any where near enough variety in it out the box. Even with the DLC (which many feel to be over priced and haven't bought it purely out of protest) it doesn't add a lot of content. The other thing to consider here is many players rent happy with the future feel of the game and it's fictional weapon/vehicle naming. While these are clearly feasible modifications in an effort to make the game fit it's future setting, there is a good core of the ARMA community who just haven't taken to this content. 

Personally I have always loved variety in games and feel it's always worth adding variety and depth with some nice content. As long as it's been done well, I'm happy to download this content to play. However, I do feel this should always be built into mods to negate confusion, unify communities and combat fragmentation of gamers. All too often, particularly with mods based around ARMA, you find these random servers running modded versions of mods, with additional mods added to them and then also experimenting with more mods! It's mod-ception.


While I agree, on the whole this is good for the community and the development of mods and stuff, encouraging server admins to go wild and it's a fundamental part of the ARMA community (a big reason I actually love ARMA and it's community!), I do feel some mods need to focus on ease of access and producing their own standardised community.

I appreciate Exile is supposed to be a "framework" for server admins to go nuts with and to implement new features and cool systems of their own - I get that and love that, but it's ALSO meant to be a PvP focused mod. That means it's going to have a bit draw to the more casual ARMA gamers, the guys who are't hard-core modders and aren't familiar with chopping and changing mods. People who can't be arsed unloading and loading a million mods just to play a server and decide they dont like it. 


Whether we like it or not - we need these people to form the foundation of the mod! To some extent were all a  little like this anyway! A PvP mod NEEDS people! Exile on an empty server soon becomes pretty shit ! Any game that relies heavily on the tension and competition of tehr players is not going to be anywhere near as exciting when you play it on your own - common sense right? So why make it harder to access and make people jump through hoops to play it? Why fragment the community to isolated servers running their own large content versions?  

 

For me this Exile frame work, while good, should be encouraging scripting server side as much as possible, and looking to incorporate the best bits of content to the mod it's self. It's something the mod can quite easily address and make compromises on for the good of the entire Exile community. At the very least to tackle this foundation issue, I would say incorporating a single good weapons pack (plenty to chose from and seek approval for use of) that added a good number of weapons and maybe one or two vehicle packs (adding a mix of military and civilian vehicles) would more than  satisfy most people. In doing that I'd estimate you've prevent the fragmentation of at least 90% of the community. 

 

The biggest counter argument to this I've seen (not the only one though to be fair!)  is that is it fair to ask every single player who wants to play this mod to download these large content packs as part of the mod? I say "why not"?


I appreciate the inclusion of these packs is a large chunk to download, but I think realistically you're probably talking a client download of around 4-5gb max (I'll stand to be corrected on that though), now having come from other ARMA mods that already have those kind of client downloads I dont find that shocking at all. Not knowing how successful it's been proven before! 

 

Also in this day and age most gamers take their connection seriously and many consider it a fundamental part of PC gaming now, making it as serious a consideration as their choice of graphics card. So it isn't going to really set them back downloading those kinds of files.  Also you have to consider that the majority of the community aren't going to be too phazed by such client download when you consider the sizes of ARMA 3 is to download in the first place, and the continues patches that the game it's self requires! 


Ultimately though, such a comprise will undoubtedly negate the need for much of the Exile community to have to continuously download mod upon mod upon mod as they search for their "perfect" server, being forced down different modding routes selected by server admins, should there be no standardisation of base content mods. I think without such an inclusion,long term you are going to be hard pushed to find two private servers that are alike and running the same mods, so longer term players would ultimately end up downloading 4-5gb every time they moved servers. 

 

For me, it's a worthwhile compromise and not something that is going to put many off the mod, not as many as the amount discouraged by having to re-download multiple mods each time they want to switch servers. 

 

I was going to touch upon the inclusion of a map too but I don't really have as strong an argument for that and to be fair I don't most people will read this far down the post lol  Anyway, I welcome feedback and opinions on the subject of content (let the flaming commence!). 

 

 

Edited October 5, 2015 by Boxman80
added a link

[MrWhite 1001]

We are planing on adding new content and we allready got stuff on hold.

[Boxman80 352]

We are planing on adding new content and we allready got stuff on hold.

 

Really pleasing to read! I thought I'd read this already but as I say, some guys within the community seemed to think this wasn't an option at all so I was wondering if they knew something I didn't.