ARMA 2 Steam Sale - Should I?

[bobtheskull]

I've seen a lot of people play this a lot, both on this site and on my friends list. I've thought about getting it a few times, and Day Z looks awesome. Question is, should I get this now before the sale ends in a few hours? What pack should I get if I do? (I know you need Arrowhead for Day Z to work right). Or should I wait til the Summer Sale kicks off and see if I can get it even cheaper?

 

[Lobster]

Buy ARMA for ARMA itself, not for DayZ. I love DayZ but the standalone alpha is coming really soon, so I don't think its worth buying into the mod right now.

 

[Vegeta897]

I don't really consider it worth getting with Arma 3 and DayZ Standalone around the corner. It's a great game, yeah, but after getting a taste of the many improvements that Arma 3 brings, I don't see any of the people in our group who have played it going back to 2. In other words, you kind of missed the boat.

As for DayZ, same story. The standalone is going to kick ass. It's not on the Arma 3 engine, but it isn't exactly the Arma 2 engine either. The movement is heavily improved much in the way that Arma 3's was, and the inventory system has been completely reworked (it's a serious pain in Arma 2 DayZ) as well as tons of other completely new systems:

Looting - There will be thousands of unique items in the game to find and/or craft. Items will be spawned in random locations all throughout buildings, not just in predetermined piles like in the mod, meaning you will have to look under tables and beds etc. What's more, there are way more buildings in the new map, as well as almost all of them being enterable.
Medical Stuff - The medical system will be very advanced, with many types of diseases and infections, with lots of different medical items you can use (if you can find them). If you don't purify some water you found, there's a chance you'll get a disease. Someone may give you a water bottle that they know is infected. Disease can spread through zombies, or even be carried by items in the game.
Nutrition - Every consumable has nutritional info like calorie amount, sugars, etc. Eating a can of soup, for example, will salve your hunger and your thirst somewhat, because it contains liquid. If you drink soda constantly, there will be negative long-term effects, which tie into the medical system again.
Items are now objects - Instead of being simple strings like in Arma 2, every item can have as many properties as it needs to. Items can have diseases and fingerprints on them, items will wear out or get damaged (and you will see this) items can contain other items (like clothing/backpacks, your main source of inventory space). Items can be crafted or used together, like a disinfectant spray on an item you find that you don't particularly trust to be clean, or crafting together an improvised bomb out of a spray can and a road flare. Maybe stick an egg timer on there too, for a timed bomb.
Radios - Radios can play live sound from things like internet radio or other players in the map broadcasting. You can also do things like set up a walkie talkie somewhere and listen to all the sounds it picks up from somewhere else, including player speech if they're talking in-game.
More and better zombies - The entire netcode has been redone to handle almost everything in the game serverside. The main motivation behind this was to prevent hacking, since Arma 2 (and 3) are very vulnerable to exploits, since so much is controlled by the clients. But another huge advantage to this is that the server can handle way more zombies, and make them more intelligent. This should also make them less glitchy, specifically when attacking, but this is still something being worked on (the latest footage from E3 and Rezzed doesn't have zombie attacks configured properly, so it looks terrible). All zombies and items are spawned into the map when the server starts, instead of just appearing around players. New hordes of zombies spawn in areas where there are no players, and will roam the map looking for food. You could actually clear out a town if you work hard enough, but will have to defend it from any packs of zombies that find their way to you.

I didn't expect to write this much when I came in here, but I'm pretty excited about it, so yeah.

 

[Lobster]

Here are a couple of videos in reference to everything Vegeta said:

Dayz. You'll wanna skip ahead on this one, as it is a buffered livestream.

ARMA 3. This was posted today, covering the state of the Beta.

 

[bobtheskull]

Shiny. Well, that's sorted that out. The new Day Z standalone sounds awesome.