arma3_official_servers

[late kayak]

just the one where you got kicked, or someone you observed and include your nickname

[muted willow]

Well im not just reporting for me, im also reporting for other people, so it seems to be almost random for who, as its happened to a lot of people
and it's happened on all non DLC zeus servers.

So do i have to list every zeus server name, along with make sure i report the nicknames of multiple people who are already gone?
or is that last above message enough?

[late kayak]

can you tell me what exactly you do for the kick to happen ?

[muted willow]

Well, It seems to be variable, it has happened just loading into a slot, spawning in, placing down respawns, and a good amount of modules.

[late kayak]

need to know exact steps

check dm

[hard night]

omg, my compositions not working ,pls fix fix yes yes come on

[keen bear]

What comps? What use case?

[late kayak]

they working, limited to =1 due to abuse

[muted willow]

can we get level 2 on certain servers then, like before?

[fair glade]

sorry but what kind of abuse? trolls dont really need scripts to ruin the server

[violet oasis]

Lolollll

@late kayak if you remove scripts permanently you will ruin pub zues. Pls no

[topaz hull]

Respectfully requesting an admin to come and ban of a player who has repeatedly been griefing In warlords US #1e. The player's name is kiosk in server but I don't know their steam ID. If you need any additional info please don't hesitate to ask and I will try to provide.

[fair glade]

@late kayak if you are talking about guys deleting loadouts, then i am pretty sure that was done by using some sort of script injector. remoteExec restriction dont let you do such things. I believe its not possible to force players vote admin or vote kick somebody and take control of the server with these restrictions. Anyway the only player who could execute scripts was zeus and if this player is troll then he doesn't need any scripts to ruin server.

[stoic stirrup]

Can't have nice thing these days, everytime we get something Fancy there's always some individuals that ruins it

[fair glade]

but this guy was using scripts way before CompositionScriptLevel = 2 was set on zeus public servers

[white stump]

Hello can we get 1-3 servers with zeusCompositionScriptLevel = 2 back?

[lyric prawn]

Yeah if its just back to eua eub euc. people can choose if they want to play on scriptable servers or not

[solar jackal]

So the reason the scripted compositions were removed was apparently because of a tiny percentage abusing it? So why put the ability to use it on every server? Only allow "zeusCompositionScriptLevel = 2" on a few of the servers like it was in the beginning. That way everyone stays happy. Seems odd to remove it completely, just like it seems odd to add it to the majority of servers.

[white ember]

Yeah, doesn't seem right to flush everyone's creations down the toilet like this. People spent a lot of time making cool missions with bunkers, triggers, custom textures, custom factions, and more useful stuff like addons to the Zeus modules. I get that the power needed to make these things possible can also be exploited by bad actors, but these trolls already have a plethora of ways to screw with servers, many of which don't even require the Zeus slot (long hints crashing peoples games, map marker exploit, drone spam, mine dispenser lagging, etc...). The list goes on. At least let the community have a few servers where they can express their creativity freely. If need be just add a warning or a disclaimer to those servers that do have script level 2. That way newcomers know what they're getting into and can accept the risk of being vulnerable to more severe trolling.

[late kayak]

the issue is that even =1 is abused now and not just that (it ain't exclusively problem of just the compositions)

[crisp cypress]

tfw joins server and places down end mission module effectively ruining the mission instantaneously

no comps required 😎

zeus has natural insecurities, might as well let people just use stuff on some servers

[pulsar marsh]

If admin has to pick the lesser evil, players freedom is limited.

The longer semi-offtopic explanation mixed with facts and my opinions:

Community, creativity and everything all good but if you ever wonder how a few trolls end up destroying entire community including the entire game franchise, just look at Dota2. Nobody can tell me, Valve lacks funds to provide proper systems and community management. They simply didn't care until player numbers dropped down to hell with an all-time low in history.

From trolls and toxic, frustration results in hatred and that was directed at entire nations and races (e.g. peruvians, russians, etc.). And lets be honest, who did not hate French in RTS games... or cocky smartasses from USA and Germany? They went to war in the past but surprisingly have a lot in common too and sadly not always positive ones.

Toxic is one perfect word if you ask me, because a poison affects other people too, no matter what you do. (Speaking of my own experience, stopped playing Dota2 forever)

Another good showcase was D2. People were whining on Europe server so much about a few Korean avg payerkillers going on rampage, they still blacklisted every IP from Korea and launched a separated server for them. This shows how "delicate" Europe game communities are.

[hollow flame]

dont continue or we will start the 3rd one as well

[rare briar]

Can we get a few official servers with the level 2 of scripting as reducing the level really took away from the joy and potential of all you could do. Would be awesome as I know many others would also appreciate some sort of server dedicated to that.

To prevent things such as it being abused some ideas which I am sure y’all probs thought of could be to limit it to the voted administrator possibly so the players in agreement can vote to remove that person from that position.
(Edited part): Too add you could maybe just reduce the number of people needed to remove someone from an admin slot if the server if the number of players is say for example above 4 so it’s not abused it servers less than 4.
Then if someone is removed they can’t apply for that same position in that server 🤷‍♂️

Sure others asked 😂

Maybe for that vote to remove an admin, to prevent them just saying “I’ll kick whoever votes” add maybe some sort of time limit before they can be kicked. And for players not to abuse that system you could maybe add a “”jail system”” to put player in so they don’t troll with that.

If y’all make sense of that, you can understand anything

[pine gorge]

We were this close to public Zeus being fun 😔

[rare briar]

We shall be again

[late kayak]

#zeus_discussion message

[keen bear]

Type "#beclient players" in chat and scroll up and down to see the ID #.

[pulsar marsh]

Vote system in Arma is proof that democracy doesn‘t work. Still not convinced? Look at Switzerland where people can vote against everything but less than 47% ever go voting. Stats can be checked decades back into the past.

Legit kick votings fail but Blufor kicks a friend of mine in Opfor bc he fucks them with legit methods. Im sorry but voting? wtf is that again? No wonder Admin rights were removed from Warlord too

I understand your frustration with Zeus mode and all your creativity stuff but one troll is enough to ruin everybodys mood for whole day.

[late kayak]

yet most of referendums in Swiss actually ended with win of logic

[pulsar marsh]

most times but not always, i assure you that much. can give you two recent painful showcase if you like as soon as im back at home

[late kayak]

it's just common mistake done about voting in general ... how to fix it? ... everyone who comes to votes, gets some % off theirs taxes (in case of no taxes then similar benefit like bonus to pension)

positive motivation style ... can't get everyone on board but makes it worthwhile to bother

[gray kettle]

Arma's voting system is problematic due to difference in languages

Not everybody on there knows how to speak english sadly

[rustic night]

@late kayak hey I got remote exce restriction 39 in warlords

[lost fossil]

I'm both sad and glad that the scripts got disabled. Giving someone a lot of power also comes with a great responsibility. myself included sadly. Altrough there are many angles mine would be "what are exacly the most used features and can we get those in vanilla zues?"

[late kayak]

and what's your nickname because i can't send you dm to ask

[late kayak]

they aren't disabled, as i wrote in zeus channel, per IP:, first server disabled, second server enabled

[lost fossil]

so some have and some havent... i need to update all my stuff 😄 thanks for the fast reply ^^.

[late kayak]

simple those at port 2302 are =0 and those at port 2402 are =2

[lost fossil]

maybe just a + in the name would make them easier to identify. idk where to check the port in arma 3 server list

[rustic night]

TmcKingXCV @late kayak

[late kayak]

what server (ip:port)?

[rustic night]

@late kayak it's working now but it was the us e #1

[solar jackal]

Had a hacker just now in warlords official us01e

Then server went offline see comments in warlords discussion

[pulsar marsh]

One eyesore showcase: people refused the recent revision of our pension funds because:

1. they did not read it properly
2. they did not understand it at all anyway
3. proposed fix interest rate was 1 point lower than current rate at first glance

What did they miss:
The rate is combined by prime rate and variable rate which can be adjusted anytime (this has been known for decades except for ignorant voters)

After voting no, they were all shocked and wonder why the new rate is suddenly two points below the suggested fix rate (which was going to stop that from happening).

2nd showcase was about purchasing new jets (we mentioned this in wl discussion somewhere). They tried so many times and now won with a very close call. The deal is still somewhat dirty because USA forced them to take some F35 in exchange to sell more F18 as originally requested. They added some Patriot defense systems too (I dont mind having some AA but no idea how they wonna justify Patriots as "jets" lol)

Another way our state is handling financial matters if referendums were successful:
try to bypass the budget limit by split projects because they don't need to ask and nobody will find out if cost is below the radar (worst possible way to ignore voters will)

Lot of offtopic I admit, just wanted to keep my promise to tell you 😅

[stoic stirrup]

put the patriot system on jet

going full arma 3

[pulsar marsh]

New official server for Swiss army recruits, they get free license and get to play some hours each week to blow off steam and encourage to continue playing during free time 😇

[pulsar marsh]

#warlords_discussion message
Just in case people here are not aware of Dwardens request

[rare briar]

Hey quick question. I am getting a session lost anytime I or anyone else tried the command #missions. Is something occurring or is it just being fussy?

[pulsar marsh]

What servers are we talking about?

[rare briar]

Official US

Well every official a few others and I that we tried didn’t work so 🤷‍♂️

[pulsar marsh]

I usually use that command for combat patrol and that other one, if you want, I can try out later after work but this will take 4-6 hours

[late kayak]

which server, like is ti zeus mission or other ? ideally tell me ip:port

[pulsar marsh]

If you are not alone and you get client error msg or the others see ingame error msg after you disc, that would help a lot for Dwarden

Thanks Dwarden

[pulsar marsh]

Dwarden will check this with you buddy

[late kayak]

also were you voted in admin or just as player when you used #missions ?

[rare briar]

Yes I was. Happened also last night. Occurred in both =0 and =2 servers. I don’t recall the port but server wise I recall US 12, US 2E, US 2W, USA 2, USA 3 and USA 4

Pretty much each server we tried

I don’t know if other servers that were highly active got around it but it’s just an issue my friends and I found

Oh yes and they are Zeus

Just tried it again in the Zeus US#02E server and same occurrence

[rare briar]

Man said buddy 0_0

[late kayak]

but they always voted-in admin, right ?

i can replicate it only when i'm voted in admin

now i think i know why it happens, #missions invoke missionEnd and all the zeus servers are set to shutdown after missionEnd

so #missions will work just before mission selected and started

using #missions as voted-in admin prior mission selected/started does list available ones normally

[rare briar]

Oh

Alright thank you very much

And yeah we did it in game after we started the mission

[late kayak]

ye that's normal behavior people will just not realize it w/o the autorestarts

[rare briar]

Yeah was it from an update? I remember doing that a few days ago and still managed to work 70% of the time 😂

So then how do you vote someone admin if the game didn’t start in the menu.

Never mind

[late kayak]

updated https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Multiplayer_Server_Commands#Admin

it was always like this, but unless you were just before the restart threshold (usual on official servers was after 4 missionEnd except e.g. large WL servers where it was 1) now it's 1 on all Zeus too

then it was hard to realize / spot especially on servers w/o any restarts via those advanced settings

so unless you were specifically looking for missionEnd / debriefing state you will not know

i know it's not perfect, because such restart/shutdown will kick all players (the instance of server process terminates itself for restart)

but at least it ensures the server memory is fully flushed

[gray kettle]

Wait ALL servers now restart after one session?

That's going to be a fair bit annoying, especially when you finally find a server with good players/atmosphere.

[late kayak]

all zeus servers because script execute mess, stuff from session leaks to the next

on large WL sessions it's done because of the time they run (often 6 to 24h) and i really consider mandatory restarts each 12

[gray kettle]

Well I understand with the zcsl=2 servers, not with the zcsl=0, but I suppose you're right since I know arma is a mess with how it doesn't bother getting rid of data that it obviously no longer needs.

[late kayak]

scripting is still issue , doesn't matter if =0 or 2

[pulsar marsh]

Now I understand why session was lost so quickly after a few missions with combat patrol and the other one. I sometimes play that to help new friends getting used to before they get snacked in wl

[rare briar]

Can we get a reset on server #2 west zeus, a admin + zeus is trolling. Basically kicked everyone after abusing

[final widget]

so i just came back into arma after hearing they reenabled scripts on pub zeus servers, based off of what i read above, was the rare instances of scripters in years past in servers that had it set to 1 or 0? and if 0 were they bypassing it (and battleye i imagine) and using a fancy injector?

[frank sand]

are official CP servers down? (all EU ones)

[late kayak]

update cycle, already back

[pine gorge]

so #missions kicks everyone off the server now?

[gray kettle]

any sort of missionend restarts the servers

#Missions, #restart, #reassign, scenario end, etc.

[pine gorge]

awesome

anyone have any other ideas for ways we can make public zeus even more unplayable?

[pulsar marsh]

It's like bad mix of goodfellas and catch me if you can, you will be always one step behind

[gray kettle]

It is really unfortunate as I can imagine finding good people and a good server is now not very beneficial since soon as the mission ends you'll lose all of it

[stoic stirrup]

is this only vanilla server or also happens to CDLC zeus too?

[pulsar marsh]

As far as I see, we have features like launch client and join previous server or auto-join servers where your steam friends are connected to but we have no such feature to keep random players stay together once server needs restart

[pulsar marsh]

Dwarden once mentioned servers need restart to flush out memory completely, I suppose all servers are involved because I don't remember any server staying online w/o restart for too long

[gray kettle]

Need a party system in arma server browser smh

[pine gorge]

is there no way to switch missions now as admin? We're just gonna have a bunch of empty 50 player zeus servers from now on?

[gray kettle]

you can

empty servers don't have their missions started

doing #missions will work just fine as missionend can only happen if the mission first starts

and so long as nobody is in-game on the pub zeus server the missions are not running

[pine gorge]

sweet, how do you login as admin without going in game?

[gray kettle]

#vote admin (name)

[pine gorge]

thanks for the help

[gray kettle]

was ye olde way of voting admin before they added the ability to do so in player list

[pine gorge]

cool, i'll admit to being pretty new to this game hahaha

[gray kettle]

it's fine, there's always things to learn in the game

[pine gorge]

appreciate it, thanks for the help

[gray kettle]

np

[late kayak]

⚠️ ATTENTION players: update to latest version of profiling , 2.06.148877 to prevent your game being crashed by griefers !
read https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Arma_3:_Steam_Branches#Arma_3, use the password listed at wiki
and then switch branch in UI (default is performance binary,m that's all you need to do)

[pulsar marsh]

We should start to sue these griefers and show them some consequences in reality...

[white ember]

Get real man. You're talking about mostly hormonal teenagers that want to vent on video games.

[late kayak]

ban is the first consequence they encounter

[stoic stirrup]

and -9000000 social credits

[tulip heron]

china does that already dude u want to be like china

[pulsar marsh]

That is the same excuse I hear when haters comment things and push idols to commit suicide in Korea.

[pulsar marsh]

I think the very concept to sue someone is more American-style than China lol

[pulsar marsh]

Does new license lift that ban? Just wonder

[tulip heron]

dude fr there is this cool thing called leaveing the game

[pulsar marsh]

I'm sure Bohemia is pleased to hear that 🤣

[white ember]

ngl, you're point doesn't apply here since we are talking about games being crashed by griefers. you cant just leave the game in that instance.

[tulip heron]

if they cared they would work a little harder

[pulsar marsh]

persistent social score as new feature in Arma, that would be fun lol
Something else they have to ponder except killscore filled with AAF 😆

[stoic stirrup]

yes social score, you start with 1000, Teamkill -250, ruining fun -90000

[pulsar marsh]

To be fair, they are doing a lot more than years ago, or is it just me imagining this

[pulsar marsh]

How would you improve that score again? 🤣

[stoic stirrup]

Yes.

[main jolt]

Is this related to #arma3_official_servers ?

[stoic stirrup]

probably for Zeus composition

[main jolt]

That's not what your first post implied...

Why would I

[crisp cypress]

Do you ever not post cringe?

[crisp cypress]

Are there ways to write compositions better so as to prevent these issues?

[pulsar marsh]

Looks like it wasnt his 1st time blowing off steam here 🤣

[violet oasis]

@late kayak let me use enhanced soundscape on pub zues

[crisp cypress]

Once again people begging for things they shouldn't be wasting their time with

[quiet eagle]

Hi, I am wondering if any official servers currently allow scripted compositions, debug console, or any other way to run custom scripts? I am developing some new Zeus utilities, and its easier to find players in an official server over my personal one. I hear there were troll problems before, and am wondering what the current state of affairs is.

[violet oasis]

@late kayak let me use enhanced soundscape pls

[late kayak]

please stop pinging me with random mod requests

[crisp cypress]

any server port 2402 and EU#0A through EU#0D allows scripted compositions, meaning compositions spawned will have their init field ran when placed

[late kayak]

as long as 0A-0D are running, which they dont

[quiet eagle]

Yeah, I don't see any such servers in master.bistudio.com or the in game browser. Just 0B which appears to be for 2.08 RC.

[late kayak]

that's different ip / different server

they down because of attacks, causing issues to other servers running on that machine

[quiet eagle]

Ok. So my understanding is that the servers allowing scripts are currently down, but should be back up later. Is that correct? I'm just an innocent player/dev that wants to try out the scripts I'm working on.

[stoic stirrup]

just remember CDLC and Livonia Zeus are scriptable

[violet oasis]

@late kayak rden allow enhanced soundscape

[stoic stirrup]

if you keep doing that, the only thing you get is Ban

[crisp cypress]

You really are the least funny person alive

[violet oasis]

Why is that?

[pulsar marsh]

really n/c

[silent anvil]

What's up with the KOTH Server?

[late kayak]

any details ?

[silent anvil]

No just curious, since when do we have one? lol

apologies for not clarifying

[pulsar marsh]

It was announced weeks ago, just had no idea it will be out now so fast

[sand moth]

any wasteland servers i can join?

[late kayak]

Official servers underground rolling update to 2.08 ... wip

[stoic stirrup]

i believe CDLC aswell?

[late kayak]

everysingleone

[lilac hedge]

All servers are down both Private and Public no one can connect

[dim tapir]

severs are down and zuse are broken

[hearty tartan]

Servers are up for me?

And I have no isses connecting either

[dim tapir]

what I'm saying in that the zuse lighting bolt and rc a ai is broken with respawns not working after updating the game

[sweet cipher]

Why is my game saying "Different Version of Game"

[hearty tartan]

I joined US1w zeus server.
Lightning works, Remote Controlling AI works.

[hearty tartan]

Just ignore that. Its saying that because steam thinks you have 2.8 instead of 2.08

[sweet cipher]

modded?

[hearty tartan]

No. Official server

[sweet cipher]

I finally got a good enoug PC that it beats Arma 3 demands it seems >;D
time to test

[crisp cypress]

Is there a list of the bad words that kick you in Official Servers? i.e. setting a group name to "shit" kicks you for some variable restriction. Is there a list of the words that kick you?

[gray kettle]

any offensive word you can think of, probably.

[crisp cypress]

Well obviously

[floral pike]

OK, so how do I update Arma 3?? It says it has been updated, and there is a change log out, but no links nor descritions for updating??

[main jolt]

Via Steam. Automatically.

...Like any other Steam games

[floral pike]

Yeah I found that out - I actually took those red "X"s on the official server browser seriously, but then decided to click on a server anyways, and I was able to join.....

[late kayak]

if anyone has time, please switch to PROFILING branch https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Arma_3:_Steam_Branches#Arma_3 then join KOTH stress server at 85.190.148.52:2102 and report problems in #perf_prof_branch (or DM me)

[hard night]

All official zeus servers stopped working with VC

nobody can hear anybody

is that intentional?

or someone is freaking around?

(been to 5 diff ones all of them lost VC function)

@late kayak sorry for ping ⬆️

[half stone]

It looks like it?

No voice chat for some reason. No clue why

[hearty tartan]

yes i broke voice chat

Good night

[half stone]

😦

[wide zealot]

When are you fixing it? 😉

[gray kettle]

Tmrw

[wide zealot]

u have this confirmed?

[gray kettle]

#perf_prof_branch message
Yep

[hearty tartan]

Fix is available now via config change.
I don't know if dwarden wants to do that or if he wants to wait till new build.

[wide zealot]

Which would be?

[hearty tartan]

Edit disableVoN=0; to //disableVon=0;

[wide zealot]

No, I was asking when would be a new build if dwarden decides to build one 😊

[hearty tartan]

about 3 hours

its building now

[wide zealot]

Ahh ok, not to bad then

[white stump]

there is vc?

[vale falcon]

still busted in 02e

I was hoping to play some pub zeus today but ig not

[rain bluff]

So still no voice?

[late kayak]

VON (voice over network) VC is disabled, until further notice

[open spindle]

Aw how come?

[gray kettle]

Any particular reason for VON being disabled?

[vale falcon]

seconded. really hope there's a good reason for it

[fleet gale]

Yeah, not going to be playing on them until it's back on - no VC ruins the game for me

[vale falcon]

removing the "public" part of "public zeus" kills the soul of it. Meeting new an interesting people with their own combos of missing neurons is 80% of the fun

[vale falcon]

guess what pub zeus is

[gray kettle]

messages I responded to were deleted

[tawdry spoke]

I think someone messed up and doesn't want to admit it

[gray kettle]

Originally yeah, was a messup on the perf branch but dedmen reverted it today

VC is fixed, but it's staying disabled on BI pub servers for unknown reasons.

[mortal siren]

Why is VON disabled?

[gentle bolt]

@mortal siren "it has been abused recently"

[mortal siren]

"abused"

[gentle bolt]

i know, i know, its painfully descriptive.

[gray kettle]

Far as I know BI staff hang around pub zeus sometimes(though very rarely with their signature squad.xml and real names), so I'd imagine this wasn't a decision made hap-hazardly.

Just going to presume this is due to rising toxicity issues within the official servers

That said, I haven't touched pub zeus in a month.

Maybe this'll at the very least be a wake up call for people who want a good experience to go join a community of like-minded people to their playstyle and preferred mission types.

[gentle bolt]

i’d really hope that the reason for complete removal of von wouldn’t be “toxicity” when muting is a function.

because all the complete removal of von does, that muting cant, is prevent immersive, cooperative communication with randoms

@gray kettle i think i maybe a bit cynical and you may be a bit too trusting. i hope the actual answer is somewhere in between.

[grizzled python]

VON is one of those building blocks to the pub Zeus experience, even warlords. To take that away is pretty much taking a wheel of your car and saying "Its okay its still the same car". Even though it'll handle completely differently.

[gray kettle]

More like the tower of babel but people can't even speak, let alone talk a language.

[gray kettle]

I mean rising toxicity more than usual, like constant slurs, racism, extreme discrimination, etc.

[gentle bolt]

mute

[gray kettle]

That'd be my reasons for them disabling VON

[grizzled python]

cause in this current point in time at the very least, Zeus's are gonna start having .txt files with their mission briefing's alone

[gentle bolt]

fairly simple. solutions to that problem already exist

[grizzled python]

Welcome to the internet. This stuffs been around since BO2 back in 2012

[gentle bolt]

or, if hell bent on disabling von, go the rainbow six route, have chat options to disable completely or set to specific channels or allow freely

[gray kettle]

Just because it's always been there doesn't mean it's okay. The status quo isn't always just.

[gentle bolt]

or they have dabbled in censorship already so do more of that with von.

there are options that exist between the current status quo and complete removal of von

and no alternatives between were even attempted before going nuclear.

[gray kettle]

I agree for sure.

I'm not siding with BI, just trying to find reason in their actions

[gentle bolt]

you’re ok, and hopefully, if toxicity is their reasoning, they are experimenting with alternatives to complete removal

[gray kettle]

I think I remember hearing this suggested wayyy back, like 4-5 years back on pub zeus that BI should "verify" or approve certain people to be actual admins/mods of pub zeus for cases like this.

But that was just an idea that circulated on pub zeus, nothing was really discussed about it on discord for sure.

And I'd honestly be for it, though not much clue on how you'd go about verifying these people are trustworthy to essentially represent BI, except interviewing or something similar.

Having actual admins on pub zeus would solve a lot of problems for sure; script injectors, toxicity, abuse of game mechanics, etc.

[late kayak]

dont talk nonsense how would admin solve script injector if he has no idea who is actually doing it

[tawdry spoke]

I wonder if theres a way to fix that without getting rid of it?

oh wait there is

muting them

[cinder sonnet]

idk why yall assumed toxicity is the issue, Abused could mean a lot of different things as well as the servers MOTD says "for safety"

[tawdry spoke]

How else could you abuse VON

?

[lost fossil]

i dont think voicechat is disabled with the reason "abuse". idk the reason, but i would look to reasons outside and inside of arma as well. spreading fake news, maybe something going on with the war?

reason for this thinking is, there is little information given, and that usually means that they are actively withholding information to not hinder any ongoing investigations.

[silent anvil]

@late kayak @hearty tartan Sorry for pinging the two of you - but is there any real estimate to when we'll get VON back?

[white stump]

lets disable von for seafty reasons, lets disable internet for toxic reasons

[stoic stirrup]

Let's disable reasoning

[silent anvil]

No but serious, killing VON will make the Official Servers worse if anything else. Now that people can no longer talk, they'll just use chat. Even with filters in place, those can be bypassed and be even worse than VC, which you can simply mute.

[muted willow]

Dedmen, dwarden just you the mute button, why even remove it without even talking to any players about if they want it removed.
so far is seems like nobody wanted this or likes this change

I've played so many hours in pub, and I've never had a problem with people abusing von, accept for once, which was when it took 6 weeks for a bug to be fixed were you couldn't mute people. And even with the mute button broken, I still only had it happen once it that 6 weeks.
Welp I aint playing pub no more.

[solar jackal]

guess public servers are about to die now

[pallid flint]

Yep

[solar jackal]

thats their plot kill all pub zues servers then shut them down

[silent anvil]

They're giving no explication but "it's being abused" with no further elaboration

it's a very hard decision for all players of official servers, as communication is key in arma. removing that function is awfu

[brisk grail]

Servers cost money and need regular bug fixes as well as maintenance. It might be more cost effective to just close all the public servers and leave private servers as the only option available as they generate more revenue than public does. This VoN bug they had to fix and decided to disable might be a convenient excuse to shutdown public servers to cut costs and save them time to work on other projects as disabling VoN drives players away from the public servers towards using private servers. Or this could just be the conspiracy side of my brain at work. Edit: Seems more information has come out about the reason why VoN was disabled and this post is no longer valid. I wish the reasoning was better clarified as “player safety” of those who have opinions on the current world conflict rather than the blanket and nondescript term “abuse” when the announcement was first made. My original conclusion was made with assumptions after looking at past comments that led me to this wrong assessment of the situation. I am leaving this post up to show how I made an incorrect statement with incomplete information which led me to spreading conspiracy. For that I am sorry.

[silent anvil]

It likely is just an excuse to eventually close down Public Zeus due to a "severe lack of players". in any case, this is a massive shame because even with all its flaws, Public Zeus still is fun...

[gray kettle]

Script Injectors like making themselves known, not to mention the more active you are the more able you are to notice consistency between names and occurences.

[silent anvil]

especially for people like myself, I don't want to build up a community of empty servers for people just to flock to KOTH / A3Life anyway.

i just want to host quick & fun sessions...

[gray kettle]

Also preventing script injectors from getting admin is a good plus as a result from having a normal admin instead of a voted one.

^

Not to mention it makes 0 sense for BI to shut down official servers

Esp considering they're disabling VON

[solar jackal]

dwarden needs permission to shut them down so he fucks community till they are dead then shuts them down

[muted willow]

dwardens said he's wanted to and he would if he could

[tawdry spoke]

Kinda like removing VON

[muted willow]

^ yeah, it makes 0 sense for BI to remove VON it still happened

[tawdry spoke]

just was in a server of 18 people and over 3/4 of them asked why they couldnt speak

lmao

Ive never seen people with such soft skin to the point the devs disable a key feature of a game

[silent anvil]

we'll probably have to work our way down the corporate ladder instead

[tawdry spoke]

ahahahahha like they care

they have a sys admin that would rather torch the servers

[gray kettle]

Yes but there's a necessity to the public servers.

[silent anvil]

Seems like it sadly

[gray kettle]

They're almost always the first experience for new players on multiplayer, so there needs to be a consistency to their behavior and the ability to ensure a good environment.

[tawdry spoke]

yea there first experience will have no team work now

[gray kettle]

In fairness even with voice chat it barely had teamwork...

I would really rather see community admins on pub zeus and be done with it. Getting rid of VON won't solve much as people can be toxic if they want to no matter what, you'd have to go through way too much effort to avoid profanities or toxic behavior.
Getting rid of the pub servers also does no good, as you'll leave players to the randomness of choice that quick play will subject them to.

Not to mention leaving the good experience responsibility into the hands of a random community you might or might not be able to trust.

[muted willow]

yeah so removing voice chat will improve that

or you could keep VON, have the good amount of teamwork, and just have people use the mute button

[gray kettle]

As much as it does ruin the "spirit" of pub zeus having some persistent admins will just solve a lot of these problems players encounter, without having to censor chat or VON.

[vale falcon]

How would persistent admins work? They obviously can’t be community members

Most of the “respected” recognized members would take a level of seriousness to pub Zeus that would ruin any appeal left

[muted willow]

" im new, is there any way to mute this person?"
"double tap J and hit mute next to his name"
simple as, you don't need to go through how to make sure community admins are good enough to do their job and not abuse it

[vale falcon]

And appointing community members would be like getting Reddit admins to run your game

[gray kettle]

If that is how it'll go then so be it, would improve the session to session quality at the very least way more than it normally would be.

Instead of getting bombarded by people shouting slurs and teamkills and having constant stand-offs where there's no way to progress forward or deal with problematic players as nobody is willing to vote an admin.

Happens way too often that people simply choose to just not vote an admin, or don't even understand english to know to do so.

[vale falcon]

That chaos is what makes public Zeus fun

[gray kettle]

Or situations where you are trying to vote a new admin so the old admin starts kicking everybody.

[vale falcon]

“Session quality” isn’t about the mission, it’s about the people you play with

If you’re playing with stuck up meal team six members then it’s just no fun

[gray kettle]

Well, yeah, that's what admins are for.

To deal with problematic players.

[vale falcon]

“Problematic” means something very different in public Zeus

[gray kettle]

It is insane that people are literally willing to just stand there for an hour and do nothing since the previous zeus left and the voted admin had to go beddie bye bye an hour beforehand.

[vale falcon]

It’s even more insane to hold w for an hour just to get one-tapped

And if you don’t like inactivity the beauty is that you can just leave. No repercussions, no bs interview to join a mil sim mike group

[gray kettle]

But that's inherently because non-english speakers will join servers that don't speak their language as they won't bother searching if the first thing they see is a matchmaking interface

[gray kettle]

There are a fair bit of times where a server will come into this standstill even with a fairly large amount of people who cooperate and communicate, and having to leave means very easily losing that good experience.

[vale falcon]

Point is, public Zeus is about the moron in the a-10 that bombs your team. It’s about the suicide prowler runs. It’s about putting a few too many ieds to destroy a building

[gray kettle]

All it requires is 4-6 people who are randomers that don't vote admin for whatever reason.

half the server could be good players but if you have no admin at most times you simply can't progress.

[vale falcon]

Then you leave and the server peeters out

The easyness of finding a game with 13-17 people is the cool part

[thorn heath]

he's got a good point people join Pub Zeus for their own particular reasons I for one join pub Zeus for the community itself, the game mode is free and players decide on how it should go, if they don't like it they either leave or they decide to change the admin by voting and take matters in their own hands which I see that as a way that problems can be solved with the community itself, The Pub Zeus servers are already being moderated by the players themselves and its absolutely autonomous

[gray kettle]

And you lose those coordinated and fun players for the rest of the day.

[vale falcon]

And you meet brand new ones!

It’s like window shopping for people

[gray kettle]

That would be cool if the people on there were somewhat consistent

[thorn heath]

we,ve had that and when it happend we told others that we are leaving for another pub zeus server and things went well

[vale falcon]

Then it seems to me you’d rather have a casual Zeus community instead of public. I left my CSGO server because I wanted a change of pace

That’s how the public cookie crumble

[gray kettle]

Other than 4 people the majority will be people who come in for the first time on pub, play for a week max and have by then phased out to a clan, community, or simply another game.

[vale falcon]

Although for sure this von removal ain’t a good plan

[thorn heath]

agreed

[gray kettle]

While you don't like holding W for an hour I absolutely despise how often pub zeus succumbs to just waiting. Zeuses taking an hour to put down 3 groups of soldiers, people sitting on their asses and not voting admin, server not filled enough to have a mission of a zeus' requirement, etc.

You don't like it? Hop onto another server and then wait some more.

[vale falcon]

It’s significantly less waiting than community servers

[gray kettle]

Really?

[vale falcon]

Absolutely

[rain bluff]

Sounds to me like you would rather have a pre made mission so you dont have to wait, Thats the whole point of zeus for everything to be made on the fly by one or two people so of course its going to take time

[gray kettle]

Warlords you hop straight in, I&A servers you join a squad, get flown in to the AO and jump into the 20 FPS lagfest, KoTH you jump into a random vehicle and get killed or killing, Altis Life you go and start doing some really interactive progress bar filling, etc.

[thorn heath]

mate from what i know of the pub Zeus experience the waiting isn't that long people vote reasonably quick and with the fact that we have compositions missions are created by the seconds

[gray kettle]

Oh and I'm fine with people making stuff on the fly, I'm also fine with waiting on mission making.

[thorn heath]

then whats this?

[gray kettle]

But there's a difference between waiting 10-20 mins for a mission and waiting an entire hour for one.

[thorn heath]

the thing is you simply dont

back then when i was a padowan of zeusing it took me 20 mins to make a mission

[gray kettle]

Makes matters worse where zeuses will simply stare and look at their mission while it's played instead of already getting to work on their next one.

[thorn heath]

missions do need moderation from their zeuses and they do need breaks theres a lotta ppl who say imma go for a smoking break

[gray kettle]

Creating no visible downtime for players.

[gray kettle]

Oh yeah and for sure I'm fine with that, but even in a case like that they will have enough time to start preparing another mission.

That's what the F hotkey is for in zeus, to simply switch views between mission making and mission moderating at an instant.

Aswell as what you have a second zeus for.

[thorn heath]

agreed but honestly ive been into the shitiest mission and they have good downtimes and they have decent waits

[thorn heath]

is there an F hotkey?

[gray kettle]

Yes, it will focus your camera on the unit you've selected.

So F hotkey on a player to see what they're doing.

[thorn heath]

thats what i was looking for for an entire year

i kept forgetting what it was

[gray kettle]

Pressing enter on the numpad to see what they're seeing, also really good

Helps with making sure that you're spawning things out of sight.

[thorn heath]

i really hope von is coming back

i miss pub zeus

[gray kettle]

I agree on that, VON should come back.

With all its inherent toxicity and problems, communications is just a key point of video games nowadays. And with any game that requires quick reflexes and fast communication like ArmA you just aren't able to type fast enough to counter it.

Hell I knew dedicated mutes who still had to stand still and do nothing just so they can give you a heads up, even if it is but a split second they could've been doing both of it at the same time.

And if you're in an active situation you will have no communication because you can't type and shoot simultaneously.

And good luck teaching people to communicate using the command system, as it's also quite the distraction while you're trying to engage in combat.

[pulsar marsh]

This is what I learned in Arma first, never chat in enemy sector 🤣
deadly distraction and the very second you need to respond hostile activities is wasted in chat mode

[late kayak]

anyone spreading nonsense from now on gets warning, VON is disabled for safety reasons , nothing more nothing less

those arm chair generals who think what can or can't be done i suggest to manage 100s of Arma servers for 10+ years then come here talk what might be doable

... servers undergoing another update cycle, to 2.08.149044 #perf_prof_branch

[strong rain]

In a game like Arma 3, which is known for it's combined arms warfare, disabling VON limits not only the ability of the infantry on the ground by hindering ground coms, but also makes it implausible for aircraft to communicate with the ground, as from first hand experience tryna type a message whilst dodging AAA isn't the easiest

[late kayak]

steps were taken to protect our players, stop flaming or blaming our staff for it, blame those who trying cause harm to other players ...

we will try address it but i can't give any ETA when it will be resolved

[strong rain]

maybe a solution would be allowing group coms so that teammates could communicate then leaving global/side to either text or squad leada

[silent anvil]

What are you even trying to fix there? Does VON have some exploit?

[late kayak]

there is no 'simple' solution, the issue lays in VON itself

[silent anvil]

Right, but we will see them enabled again eventually, right?

[late kayak]

afaik not, but VON is p2p and those who understand what it means get the point why, in actual state of world, it was disabled

[gray kettle]

So it's a security risk deal?

[late kayak]

no, like i just type ...

[silent anvil]

Wouldn't it be best to push it out to other servers as well then? Everyone is vulnerable if VON is that easy to exploit

[late kayak]

it isn't exploit, it's the way how point-to-point VON works ...

[thorn heath]

im sorry dwarden were just trying to understand the issue

[silent anvil]

Right, but doesn't that pose a security risk either way, even outside Official servers?

[late kayak]

in short, at public server with VON, it cause safety risk for any the players on the server

not security, safety ...

[strong rain]

so your saying that you're worried abt fully grown men getting cyber bullied

[silent anvil]

Safety, in any case what about the A3Life, KOTH etc servers... Their users are vulnerable as well then, right?

[strong rain]

or was it like racism or something

[late kayak]

it's not about worried, worried i was when i requested p2p to be removed 9 years ago

[strong rain]

i still have no clue what you're on abt, you talking like yoda fr

[late kayak]

so think about what's actually going on in world and what such 'safety' issue may mean in relation to those events

we aren't talking anymore about some ddos or doxxing flexing but events which ruin or destroy lives ...

and this applies to civilians at multiple sides

[strong rain]

what

[thorn heath]

؟؟؟

[gray kettle]

Then what about having people muted by default and you just selectively unmute? Wouldn't that ensure the safety?

[strong rain]

mate it's literally just coms in a multiplayer game

[late kayak]

there is no mute by default, stop with demands of solutions which will not fix the problem and reason why it got disabled

[strong rain]

but there is -_-

[silent anvil]

Will VON be a risk to any public server now? I'm genuinely concerned, I'm running some Public things and I don't want my users to be at risk.

[thorn heath]

were merely trying to understand the issue dwarden

[late kayak]

even if everyone was muted by default, the VON will be disabled, cause it would not change the safety problem

it's nothing related to the voice part of it ffs

[thorn heath]

okay p2p is the issue?

[strong rain]

ahh okay i got you

[thorn heath]

peer to peer how is that an issue ?

[crimson marten]

One message removed from a suspended account.

[gray kettle]

Very insecure

[thorn heath]

AHHHHHHHH

so security risks that could lead to other risks aswell

[silent anvil]

Yeah P2P is an actual issue. I'm concerned about my own Public Servers though, should VON be restricted there?

[late kayak]

only if you want to ensure/improve safety of your players , every admin / server owner must to decide that on theirs own

[thorn heath]

dwarden if thats the case isnt there a better p2p thats secure for Arma 4?

[late kayak]

i personally hope any P2P (unless it's opt-in) will not exist for future safe MP games, doesn't matter if it's dayz, arma or else

[thorn heath]

ik cuz if p2p is bad alotta games gonna leave it and i guess a better will come out

[late kayak]

please, i clearly type it's "safety" risk issue, not direct security one

[gray kettle]

Is there a possibility for the system to get overhauled?

[silent anvil]

Yeah curious about that as well

[gray kettle]

Just asking.

[silent anvil]

Maybe Official Zeus TFAR? lol

[late kayak]

i hope so, but i'm sure someone wish it wasn't cause it ain't small amount of work at all

[silent anvil]

Wait actually, is TFAR P2P?

[gray kettle]

Nope

As it works through teamspeak

All goes through the TS server

[silent anvil]

Maybe we could offer that as a temporary alternative if not too much work..?

I know it may sound stupid but since Dedmen seems to be invovled with TFAR it'd be cool

[late kayak]

Mumble server(s) would be way more logical as workaround, at least it's opensource

[open spindle]

I'm just sad because some public zeus lobbies are great fun when everyone is communicating

[strong rain]

just so i understand, what's is and what is so bad abt p2p

[gray kettle]

Wouldn't opensource make it more vulnerable?

[silent anvil]

Basically, IP Grabning etc

[strong rain]

oohhh right i got you

[silent anvil]

With the current affairs in the world, I suppose it could lead to some incidents

[late kayak]

could is past sense

[silent anvil]

Well, will.

Or already does, in any case I got you now

[late kayak]

no the point is, we aren't talking anymore about theory scenarios

hate me if you will, i'm not going to leave on conscience that someone was doxxed, hurt, threatened, jailed or worse if i could prevent it

[strong rain]

by current affairs are you referring to the minor conflict between 2 large european nations

[gray kettle]

No that's fine now that we understand

[silent anvil]

In any case, I'm gonna suggest an alternative like TFAR for the time being then, it'd actually be beneficial since new players would get more used to using it then

Yeah I understand now as well.

[open spindle]

Just use discord lobbies no?

[silent anvil]

Public Zeus tho :/

[strong rain]

haha yeah im good on giving my disc to everyone one on pub zeus

[thorn heath]

we get you there are some phycos out there getting someones adress then send them pipebombs

[open spindle]

just use the VC's in this discord I mean

[silent anvil]

Plus links are tricky in Arma

[vale falcon]

What’s the problem with someone having your ip? You can’t get precise locations from it and you’d only use public not private no?

[gray kettle]

I would also advocate for having TFAR used together with MOTDs on the server notifying people to join it, I could see about finding help in providing it if need be as I know a fair bit of people with underworked server machines

[open spindle]

You can do a lot with someones IP

[thorn heath]

Dwarden thanks for clearing that up

[gray kettle]

Much more than that far as dwarden's implying

[thorn heath]

yeah

[silent anvil]

+1, if there is a possibility I'd love to see it

[strong rain]

a feel like, although this is an issue, i feel like its being a bit catastrophied for what is is

[silent anvil]

Maybe like all scriptable servers TFAR enabled?

[vale falcon]

Like what?

[gray kettle]

All servers TFAR enabled, preferably.

[strong rain]

or acre

[open spindle]

I feel like thats something I probably shouldn't answer here

[gray kettle]

Gain access to all their data packages they send to and from their computer

In general

[vale falcon]

Location tracking is impossible with it. You talking about dos?

[open spindle]

Dos is one thing for sure but there are plenty of other things that could have a negative impact with someones IP

[late kayak]

again you looking at it too complex, imagine you are state agency and there is law about protesting the war, with penalties of up to 15 years in prison

someone says something in von/chat w/e ... someone else reports him

life ruined

[silent anvil]

Yeah, R IPs could easily be screwed over here

[gray kettle]

Games essentially getting caught up in cyber warfare

[late kayak]

as i said, this step protects players on multiple sides ...

[silent anvil]

Can we consider TFAR then or should we address that to Dedmen?

[late kayak]

i'm not going to setup tfar servers or anything teamspeak

and as most people don't even know how use mumble, then no murmur servers either

[gray kettle]

We can use mumble if it's supported

I'm willing to use anything really.

I'm sure many others too.

[silent anvil]

I just want to be able to VC, really

It's the most fun part but I understand the risk

[late kayak]

me too but we can't have have the nice shiny things because of people who like to ruin lives of others

this needs engine level change (route all thru server, omit all client info)

[silent anvil]

I know this may sound awful, but maybe prevent IPs at risk being able to join for the time being? Get affected to use a VPN, or is it more complicated?

[late kayak]

anyone is at risk, like i said, multiple sides

you support one side, someone crazy from other side does something

[gray kettle]

Could BI put out a public notice or something, tell people to avoid using VON and only using TFAR or other external programs...?

I feel like if it's such a big deal people should know about it

[late kayak]

like i said, the underlying way how VON works and that it's p2p is known for years, anyone who understand that term and networking, safety and security realizes the risks

[silent anvil]

I think many server owners probably didnt this this far tho

Maybe push out a note through the launcher?

[late kayak]

not going to solve anything just create more fascinating theories of some , as just this chat shown

[silent anvil]

But then how will anyone realize the risk? Also Dedmen said you guys wanted to do this for a long time, so I suppose it's something more...

[muted willow]

well, apologies, should of started with that.

[crimson marten]

One message removed from a suspended account.

[late kayak]

even after i explained it , people keep going on ...

so it doesn't matter

[silent anvil]

But this is a safety risk you are right

[late kayak]

until p2p is gone, the VON stays disabled on official servers...

[silent anvil]

Maybe a twitter post at the least? many servers owners won't know

[late kayak]

many server owners know for years ... it was minor issue of possible risk

[gray kettle]

Honestly without VON and seeing as there's no plans to setup alternatives for the time being it might be for the best to shut down the official servers, or try to route people to community ones.

[late kayak]

anyway, why it wasn't sorter earlier that's discussion for another time

[gray kettle]

I gotta be honest dwarden you know well that a fair bit of server owners will not be the smartest tools in the shed

[late kayak]

what i said about spreading nonsense ?

[gray kettle]

Alright, just suggesting.

[thorn heath]

Dwarden Thank you for clearing it up, and as an iranian i get the threat level if i say something not liked by my gov i be in a van taken to the harshest prison waiting 6 months for my tiral to be 2 to 15 years come to think of it the chances are low but F*** me if it happens

[late kayak]

i'm really sorry it wasn't resolved long time ago, i tried but not everyone understands the importance of changes i request

[thorn heath]

no worries u did the right thing

[gray kettle]

Sorry if this sounds like a silly suggestion, but could we then improve the communication capabilities that arma's command system allows? Access to more voice lines, etc.? Would be a good replacement to VON for the time being without external programs or any vulnerability of any sort.

And would most likely take the least effort?

[gray kettle]

To elaborate on that idea, there are a lot of voicelines AI can use that players can't, so having those accessible would help.

[thorn heath]

Dwarden my Girl sends her regards and thanks saying you guys care about your players (she plays arma with me so saying something gov considers Heresy would put us in a lotta trouble)

[fleet terrace]

Hopefully we get vod back soon

Cause zeus without vod is unplayable

[silent anvil]

guess it's time to create our own

[tawdry spoke]

Thank you dwarden for removing von as i live in china and i get knocks at my door every week for going on us servers and i would get builled for having a homosexual Chinese accent and you have saved me from being sent to the work camps

thank you dwarden

A thank you from the free homosexual community of china

[lost fossil]

i now incorperate it into my missions.
opfor has disabled an important antenna array. dispatch a team to scout out area X

after reaching the array
well done on clearing out the area around the array, sadly it is going to take a while to recover.
seeing the current condition we can confirm opfor has tapped into parts of our communication
we will continue communication trough written and coded messages

[pulsar marsh]

Discord, Mumble, Teamspeak, plenty of options, just use the solution and dont wait things to get patched. Voice communication on public server is mostly shit talk or chitchat, especially US servers. I dont remember that I was unable to fly or play without VON. It is possible and always has been possible for players who focus on the game.

If people wishes to communicate, they will follow.

[thorn heath]

i swear to god i thought dwarden was saying mumble as in people mumbling in arma like tottaly accurate battlegrounds

didnt know mumble is somthing like discord or ts

[pulsar marsh]

Tbh, I never heard of Mumble either and people in my community tell me its audio quality is not worth mentioning. Overtone on the other hand looks promising but I will stay with Discord unless they mess up 😆

[gray kettle]

Mumble's the oldest of the three

but it's integrated within some games

[pulsar marsh]

Overtone is integrated in many popular games too as far as I remember. They are doing far better than Steam Voice at least.

I used Teamspeak quiet a long time and I remember people tried to convince me with Ventrilo in the past but that one seems to be no more. I switched to Discord some years ago.

[gray kettle]

Teamspeak I think still competes really well with Discord, instead of Discord trying to be a general social platform Teamspeak focuses entirely on voice chat and does it really good.

Hell, only recently has Discord added the capability to hear people while you're speaking, and to hear more than one person at a time.

[late kayak]

those people talk nonsense as Mumble was ahead of TS in audio quality for ages (always first to adopt new codecs)

it just work, it doesn't have fancy UI and some of the features TS users prefer (plugins and some channel stuf, but lot of things was added in past years)

[pulsar marsh]

The only thing I did not like about TS was it's Spartan UI 🤣

[pulsar marsh]

I used TS1 and 2 very long time ago and I'm sure Mumble did not even exist at that time. All I know is TS fell short of audio quality on top of their ugly UI (no idea of TS3 though) but we had no real better choice 20 years ago. I never tested Mumble myself btw. Some people see future in Overtone bc they now aim outside their cuddle box. I heard they are integrated in Fortnite, LoL and PUBG but I haven't played any of these popular games.

Btw I have to admit I did enjoy some of those channel features inside TS 😃

As soon as I need my own server again, I'm curious which one will impress me with better audio quality and features. For now Discord covers my daily needs but I really wonder if further improvements in voice features are part of their agenda in the years to come.

[late kayak]

i don't argue about who is older, i commented about the progress ... each time Mumble adopted something new or leaped ahead, TS always had 'major' release ... that's all

anyway TS3/Mumble are past ... future is something like Matrix (Element as example)

it's opensource, can be centralized and decentralized, more trustable than telegram, discord and guilded ...

as people learning the hard way in war times ... trust, open code and security matters

[pulsar marsh]

I did not intend to argue 🤣 Mumble vs TS reminds me of AMD vs Intel.

It is quiet impressive how many TS customers still resist to switch over to any alternatives. Discord grabbed a lot of Mumbles market share meanwhile and large companies providing voice solutions already battle for business customers like there was no tomorrow.

Element/Matrix look very promising but opensource was always a difficult environment. The only successful showcase of any opensource projects I can think of is Android so far.

(And lets never mention Telegram again, that thing belongs to darknet, Signal is far better in terms of privacy, wouldn't you agree? 😆 )

[vale falcon]

It’s beyond tedious to get everyone to join a discord server. Even supposing they have it in the first place

[stoic stirrup]

is VON on official CDLC also disabled?

[digital tangle]

Someone ping me when VON comes back, it just isnt the same without it.
I miss the joyous playful conversation whilst committing warcrimes. It makes the players seem less human. Also ever since VON has gone off I cant verbally discourage some poor soul from cluelessly disassembling my mortar and then taking one of the bags with him

[gray kettle]

Le warcrimes joke has arrived

[fleet terrace]

I just want VON back

[gray kettle]

Get in line with the rest of 'em

Maybe if you bother BI on twitter or smthn, since people who work those are higher up

I think.

[pulsar marsh]

Well, do we really need all of them? lol
We are normally using chat or map markers most of the time and rarely speak in VON.

[vale falcon]

Yes. If you don’t like von just turn it off yourself. Quit justifying tossing the baby with the bath water

[pulsar marsh]

Solutions for the time being are given and all I hear is yet another argument rejecting it. In fact it is you who refuses the solutions and again you who tries to justify how difficult it is to use them.

On the other hand, I merely pointed out the facts and that is exactly what I like about Arma. How about just focus on the game and stop bitching here?

How comes that all of you are happily talking in Discord about VON but refuse to use it's voice features for a while? It is no wonder Dwarden is in bad mood if some people are bitching about VON, spreading rumors and blaming others like angry mob. Won't bring back VON any second faster but there you go.

I wouldn't be surprised if you were among those I mute ingame because your reaction here tells me you are rather a better talker. Seems meaningless to explain why pilots and tank drivers appreciate map markers over chat/von spam.

[lime ice]

Dude idk what you are on about. Every single complaint has been due to the only fun in public Zeus being the voice chats, wheter to joke around or take it seriously.

Not only that in order to find out why its turned off people have to go on a whole witch hunt for information.

Thats legit it, not being told why (or having to search for a good while for it) and/or ruins the game.

VON is legit the whole point of Zeus,

Also I disagree with anyone shitting on Dwarden its not easy handeling groups of people by sending messages, but thats the exact situation alot of the community also feel like they are in.

[vale falcon]

because getting a server of 18 random people that turnover quickly to join a discord call, assuming they have discord, is impractical and still doesnt solve the issue at hand

It honestly absurd to think that discord is a suitable replacement for von with separate channels, hearing ranges, and groups

[stoic stirrup]

||Squad|| looks really good rn with their active VON

Well hopefully the issue with VON will be fixed or addressed in the next Arma title (considering new Engine (if it ever release or happening))

[pulsar marsh]

I missed the whole part about VON. I just saw Dwarden posting a warning in this and the other wl discussion channel the other day. If people don't even care to read and just tag Dwarden to write stuff like "we want VON back", I would say its no wonder he is a little irritated because I never saw him being short-tempered

[pulsar marsh]

They shall take their time, don't they dare to bring out Arma 4 while I have no fucking video card to buy 🤣

[pulsar marsh]

The real issue is people do not listen. With that in mind, VON doesn't solve this at all. If you join hands with random people and you like playing with each other, they will share steam ID with you, they will gladly follow you to Discord or you get invited instead. This is how it worked for me and many others over the years.

I did not belittle your issue. My question stands if we really need to have them all on Discord or if we really need VON that much to play our game. Discord is more social platform than voice chat app to me but I still think it is good enough for a bunch of people who seek voice chat.

[lime ice]

wtf you mean dont read

not everybody is going to join into a discord and sift through hundereds of messages in each channel. I got told the channel & how far up in a pub zeus, which is the only reason I found it

Common sense my man

[gray kettle]

Considering everybody's already on the discord because it's being sent through motd messages on pub zeus, you would just need to go the extra step and tell people what voice channel to use.

But discord's voice would not fit arma's nature, not at the slightest.

[vale falcon]

Its not just about voice chat. As lanker mentions, Arma demands several partitions of voice control

Global, side, group, vehicle, and direct are not possible in discord

[gray kettle]

The only real way to circumvent it is to just not go on pub zeus and go on community zeus servers.

[pulsar marsh]

You do know that Discord offers search engine, right? Do you really think I care to read everything here? While it's enjoyable to read other people's opinions and their refreshing ideas, there is equal amount of nonsense too.

[lime ice]

?

Im saying they should announce it

you are v weird my man idk what to say

[pulsar marsh]

I do not think Discord can ever replace integrated VON such as Overtone or TS which quiet a lot of people still refuse to ditch for many reasons. The only reason why I suggest Discord as temporary solution is simple: You are all here already. Why bother and check for Mumble, TS and whatever? But that is entirely up to each of you again.

I'm not sure if it is "that easy" to fix that security hole within days or weeks. People are welcome to use alternative voice apps or keep complaining, I prefer spending this time with playing Arma without VON but ofc just my opinion as usual.

[pulsar marsh]

As I said earlier, I missed the whole part about VON. If you say there was no announcement, you could kindly ask Dwarden if there was any (or something following soon)

All I remember is he wrote yesterday that it remains disabled for safety reasons.

[pulsar marsh]

Those features are indeed very useful and I do not argue about that. But right now, its a question of having VON or no VON. Nobody said we shall replace it with Discord or anything else forever.

e.g. TS offers similar features but I'm not sure if you get to move lot of people to TS that easily on top of the server cost someone else has to cover additionally.

[vale falcon]

"Discord, Mumble, Teamspeak, plenty of options, just use the solution and dont wait things to get patched. Voice communication on public server is mostly shit talk or chitchat, especially US servers. I dont remember that I was unable to fly or play without VON. It is possible and always has been possible for players who focus on the game."

Actually you did suggest we don't need von

[pulsar marsh]

Yes, my opinion did not change at all. I just had my share of public warlord yesterday again and nobody was complaining about missing VON and nobody struggled to play w/o it.

From speaking with you, I get the impression that its almost unplayable without integrated VON. Good teamplay should work with little communication to begin with. I don't presume Zeus is the same like Warlord but if everyone shares your opinion, you could simply use the alternatives and spend less time in argues here.

In that regard, Lanker is right but doesn't matter whether Discord fits in Arma's nature or not because the very question still remains the same, do you guys wish to play with or w/o voice for now?

We don't know when the problem will be fixed, the waiting time is indefinite. You have the temporary solutions at your doorstep, you either pick it up or leave it outside. Nobody will force you to do anything.

[silent anvil]

Warlord is not the same from Zeus, it's a whole different experience. Zeus absolutely requires VON because it requires organization and teamplay, while this is optional for Warlords. I understand the cause why VON was deactivated, so I'm not gonna cry about that and seek a different solution for myself - however, your take is atrocious.

[cinder sonnet]

99% of the fun from pub Zeus comes from shitposting in a voice chat while attempting to take the missions seriously

[pulsar marsh]

And here we go again... I don't feel offended at all, call it atrocious as much as you like because you do not read at all. I already pointed out myself that Warlord is probably not the same like Zeus but saying Zeus needs VON at all cost is something I clearly do not believe at all. We have two different opinions and leave at it.

[pulsar marsh]

I'm pretty sure quiet a few people in warlord share your opinion too. But there are more people who consider this a disturbance and we just mute them because that's the easiest way to avoid conflict.

What I do not understand is why a few guys need to chitchat in side or command channel the whole time, they could use a group channel instead. This is precisely why I do not miss VON atm, its suddenly quiet and peaceful. Everything has its up and downside.

[cinder sonnet]

People chit chat because it’s a game, you meet people you like and you have fun. I’ve had a lot of fun just talking and chilling out with people in warlords. Honestly one of my favorite arma moments comes from me drunkly singing “all i want for Christmas is you” with the rest of opfor as I played it on my soundboard. Lots of fun and the team enjoyed it

If you want peace and quiet

Multiplayer probably isn’t your thing

[silent anvil]

Play Zeus and come back

[pulsar marsh]

I played Zeus in the past and I do not miss it. You are welcome to play and cherish it. And just to make one thing clear, warlord requires teamplay too.

[silent anvil]

Then you are missing the point and your opinion is of no real value here

[pulsar marsh]

I'm sorry to disappoint you but neither my opinion nor yours have any value here because VON remains disabled. Your choice whether to bypass the problem or continue this here.

[silent anvil]

nvm...

[pulsar marsh]

Most public warlord servers are rather quiet because this game requires full attention and that is good btw.

Lets say you join warlord with two of your buddies and all of you keep chatting in VON side channel for hours. Now people ask you to stop. What is your answer? "Multiplayer is probably not your thing?" I hope you care better for your own team. Switching channel is so easy but these people prefer getting muted instead. This shows how much consideration we have to offer each other.

[cinder sonnet]

every warlords game ive played had shitposting conversations. Arma is a game, doesn't need full attention. I work all day then i choose to get on arma to have a good time, if people are being a shithead about me having a conversation with some chill dudes I had just met then they need to grow up and learn to either mute or ignore it.

[pulsar marsh]

I'm pretty sure noone is being a "shithead" about you having a quick conversation but most likely if you keep talking for the next 6 hours nonstop in side channel even though nothing of that is game- or team-related.

[crimson marten]

One message removed from a suspended account.

[cinder sonnet]

you know

things other than arma exist

[digital tangle]

Lets shift discussion to submarine warfare in ArmA

Specifically, throwing submarines at eachother.

[stoic stirrup]

!namedebate

[vernal bane]

The correct name is Arma 3. See: https://www.bohemia.net/blog/arma-2-the-name-tale

[digital tangle]

👍 very cool thanks for sharing with the class

[tawdry spoke]

eh who cares about Von anymore

zam just started there own server and it has von

[pulsar marsh]

Really? I didnt know that 🤣
Lets hope you‘re not one of them who use this excuse after doing shit and making others upset.

[prime oriole]

Likely he's one of those

I rarely seen anyone who doesnt screw over others ever makes this excuse

[cinder sonnet]

No, I’m a guy who has work, then decides to sit down and enjoy arma. My argument is that you can enjoy arma without taking it seriously. It’s a game where ya can meet people and blow shit up.

I don’t want to deal with some shitty milsim nonsense of no talking unless it’s needed because that’s just sad and depressing

But if that’s what your into then good ok you I guess

[pulsar marsh]

After years of playing games, I came to the same conclusion.

[prime oriole]

So does anyone who doesnt make your excuse

[pulsar marsh]

There are people who take it too serious and those who take it too easy. Between them you find the core of every community, the people who enjoy the game without bothering others and I belong to this one.

[cinder sonnet]

Cipher do you even know the core of the argument?

[cinder sonnet]

I just don’t see talking to people bothers anyone. If you are genuinely bothered by two people having a conversation then you are taking arma too seriously

That’s just all it is, you can’t change my mind on that fact.

[prime oriole]

If we ignore the majority of the time people are trying to be offensive, spamming the voice chat with slurs, constantly pressing the caps lock for no good reason and not talking

[cinder sonnet]

I’m not talking about toxicity, that’s not at all my argument

[prime oriole]

And did you forget the reason VON is disabled? Something about it being peer 2 peer

[cinder sonnet]

But sure change the narrative if that’s how ya feel

[prime oriole]

Toxicity is a part of it

[cinder sonnet]

Von being disabled isn’t part of this conversation

[prime oriole]

Its part of the voice chat

[cinder sonnet]

Von Is Voice chat, and toxicity isn’t the reason VON was removed however

Dwarden stated it was due to it being p2p which in general means a direct connection between your computer and the other players computer which is a major security risk.

As opposed to a connection to the server transferring all the voice.

So no I’m not defending toxicity, I’m defending people trying to make friends on arma

[hearty tartan]

VoN has been P2P without major issues for 15 years or more.
Only recently people started abusing it to unacceptable levels

[stoic stirrup]

but how to Punish those said people?

[prime oriole]

Funny thing, game been smoother without the VON

[silent anvil]

Let's just hope for a fix in the forseeable future

[late kayak]

you can't pushing such people, that's literally impossible to detect nor enforce

[stoic stirrup]

but how do they able to use p2p to detect other user? (if its a confidential information no need to answer it)

[late kayak]

it's not security risk in sense as there is no known vulnerability, it's safety risk of what else it involves and causes

[late kayak]

i already explained it, if you do some reading how p2p works you will understand too, because that's the issue in itself

i give hint, Discord is not p2p

[late kayak]

let's be blunt on it, it was always issue, it was just overlooked as annoyance by those who failed understand severity

[hearty tartan]

Our VoN doesn't have a critical security issue or bug or exploit, its simply the way P2P works. Our P2P VoN works just fine, but p2P is just bad

[late kayak]

that's why it got 'fixed' in DayZ after it was 'blown at social media'

Arma community was always way more responsible in that sense and thus didn't suffer from such level of abuse, until recently

we will try do our best to get this sorted, just can't give you any ETA

[stoic stirrup]

if only they upgraded arma engine to that of DayZ

[errant marlin]

That hybride engine came in 2018, while dayz was still in early acces/development, Arma 3 had its full release in 2013 and was already only being worked on by a much smaller group of developers than in 2013/2014 as developers were being moved around for probably working on either Dayz or enfusion (and maybe other not published games).

Making the swap to the other engine for Arma 3 would probably be starting from 0 again and those resources would better be off working on new game titles (announced/unannounced).

And let's not forget the need for communication within Arma or Dayz are for total different uses. Dayz it is really less used than Arma where it is key to communicate.

[analog echo]

The whole p2p problem for everybody who’s confused here is probably the same problem that led to Xbox changing their party chat from being p2p to server based if you google that.

[analog echo]

Difference here being it’s not simply ddos they’re probably worried about but someone getting someone elses ip and then telling authorities in certain places that recently passed laws against their residents speaking negatively of certain topics that someone with an ip there did just that

[cold heath]

Literally this

Dwarden even gave an example, just use that thonker

again you looking at it too complex, imagine you are state agency and there is law about protesting the war, with penalties of up to 15 years in prison
someone says something in von/chat w/e ... someone else reports him 
life ruined

We all know what ... is, unless you live under a rock or don't care for the news

It was the best decision made in a difficult situation.
But try explaining that to pissed off individuals with the forethought of a flip flop 😄

[muted willow]

I would say this but the driving in arma is one of my favorites, and well looks at dayz cars those ones don't do so hot. I do like the gear shifting feature though

[cold heath]

Yeah, I don't particularly enjoy getting sent to space by crossing a railroad a little too fast

[hearty tartan]

There is the option of completely rewriting our VoN system and moving it from P2P to server.
But as you may be able to imagine, thats not a small task

[cold heath]

And it yoinks resources from other things ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[muted willow]

have fun dealing with the engine if you decide to

[hearty tartan]

Currently I don't want to do it, but I may change my mind in the future. But definitely not before the 2.10 update in like august or so

[cold heath]

Is something specific happening with that one?

[hearty tartan]

its just the next update, thats all

[cold heath]

Ah, fair enough

[drifting pelican]

The fact that players can't be trusted with P2P VON anymore (which had benefits for resiliency and arguably overhead) shows how far the official server community has degenerated since 2014.
For some period, these servers were the only servers which were popular, accessible and respected the milsim magic circle that originally defined the game.
The popularization of the game by streamers and let's players turned the exceptional situations showcased by those streamers into the rule for new players. Many of those behaviors are degenerative to gameplay within the magic circle.
The fact is, the official servers don't serve the same game anymore. This isn't a game about the Iranian invasion of Altis in 2035. It's a game about "Kyle Rittenhouse" and "Ceaucescu" picking up a machinegun (preferably the heaviest they can find) and shooting each other in the back before one of them amasses enough support to kick the other. And in between shooting each other, or saying something that's not allowed to be repeated here, maybe they'll run tactlessly at the AI before turning their efforts on kicking the person who placed them because the events that previously transpired can only be the fault of that person.
The reason why there's a minority of people here who are pleased that VON is disabled is because the people who want to participate in the magic circle the least are going to be the people most deterred from playing on the servers. Yes, this degrades the experience of that minority too, but to a lesser extent than the others, as they have described. Their experience depends on playing the game, the original game. Others less so.

[hearty tartan]

the whole community has degraded.
Everywhere you look on steam forums is a shitshow.
Official servers are constantly riddled with hackers and trolls and people who think its funny to throw the N word and other insults at people for no reason.
The modding community is full of theft and people not caring for the effort others put in

[pulsar marsh]

Thats exactly what I have been telling but some people did not like it at all 🤣

[drifting pelican]

I don't think this means that there aren't "good" people (everyone has a different definition of good) in this community anymore. I just think that as the community gets larger, there's less unity of purpose, more bad actors, and it's harder impossible to rely on social controls to enforce desirable behaviors. There's no such thing as institutional controls in a game, and as the devs will tell you, technological controls are hard and will almost never cover everything (though I will argue something is better than nothing).

[stoic stirrup]

Good for Warlord (kinda), bad for Zeus and some other COOP gamemode

[pulsar marsh]

It is not at all. How are we supposed to make new playmates and friends if we do not talk to each other? But it is very different if people keep talking half a day in side channel regardless of how the team feels about. Even worse if they keep talking in side channel after being asked to stop or switch channel. This is what pours oil on the fire.

Most of the time I admit I'm more radio silent myself but I do chat and use voice too. Sometimes I am chatty too but more like for 5min at best. I'm usually busy playing the game and happen to find some time to chat once I run out of targets. And btw I do not intend to change anyone's mind because this discussion so far doesn't change my mind either. We just stated some facts, shared some opinions, the situation did not change. Not to mention I'm too lazy to convince people about anything.

[cinder sonnet]

I wouldn’t say you are lazy as we have both wasted a lot of time with this conversation. But I just don’t see how talking for hours on end with some new people in a pub zeus is an issue, like it’s just pub zeus, people are supposed to interact

[pulsar marsh]

Yes, I agree.

[stoic stirrup]

but chatting in Warlord is a pain when you get +10 cp all the time.

[pulsar marsh]

I doubt reading/typing is more work than trying to convince someone 🤣. Typing is no work for me (just think of the past when we played w/o von), but reading takes some time indeed. On the other hand, this is how I show respect by reading other people's efforts to share their opinions regardless of whether we agree or not. Btw, I was generally speaking of Warlord experience. Zeus is a different matter ofc (BUT people in warlord are very much supposed to interact too)

[pulsar marsh]

Do you remember those horrible days when we all fail and get stuck in base because you can't even afford fast teleport? 💩

[cinder sonnet]

That kinda explains our disagreement, warlords and zeus are two very different game modes

[pulsar marsh]

It does and yes 😆

But no worry at all, I totally understand your point and assumed you understand ours. I just think the argues before our discussion went overboard bc I still believe it would be easier to use some alternative such as Discord until integrated von is fixed. The other only option would be playing w/o voice at all (and someone called this very indication of mine as atrocious, so there was nothing else to say)

[cinder sonnet]

Playing without von is doable

It just ruins my entire gimmick

[pulsar marsh]

That much is true indeed, chat alone cannot provide any of that.

[vale falcon]

Saying that official servers don’t have a point is just ignorant of the many users like myself that actually enjoy the random and casual nature that these servers provide. Not all of us enjoy servers run by Milsim Mike and his Meal Team 6 server

[vale falcon]

This, much like every other argument you’ve presented, can be solved with the mute button

[pulsar marsh]

There is no need to present any argument because some facts are still the same and remain unchanged for quiet a long time:

1. side channel is involving the whole team, no platform just for few guys.
2. we are already making good use of the mute feature
3. mute is not permanent
4. problem is not solved, you just avoid the conflict to some extent

[vale falcon]

Problems don’t need to be solved in a public space because it’s nobody’s place to solve them

[pulsar marsh]

It is no wonder global von has been disabled, admin rights on warlord servers have been disabled, some valuable scripts on zeus server have been disabled and now the von has been disabled completely. This proves just one thing and I don't have to spell out the obvious facts everyone knows already, do I?

With your logic in mind, we should just forget about VON because why bother to mute people one by one if you can mute all of them? I doubt you would be happy about this. This is precisely why you are saying not all of you enjoy servers run by "milsim mike" and his milsim friends.

[vale falcon]

No, I hate milsim mike because he’s boring

Public servers have 10k times the character and charm of a private server and it can’t be reproduced

Permanent, sweeping changes don’t need to be made. Again, baby with the bathwater

[pulsar marsh]

And that still makes no sense to me. If our world and community were like that, we wouldn't need any law and order.

Public servers are run with rules everyone has to comply with, no exception. If someone disagrees, he is free to host a private one and create his own world and his own rules.

[vale falcon]

Ignoring your strawman, public servers shutting down will be the worst thing Arma has done in a long time

[vale falcon]

Public servers are run by the community. Your point is invalid because you think there is just some universal law

If I want to play as the Stig blasting top gear music driving a vbied then I can’t go anywhere but a public server

That is not reproduce-able on private servers

[pulsar marsh]

Public servers are run by BI and for sure not by the community lol
What nonsense are ya talking about man? The community is just guest on this server and Bohemia does have rules both in Discord as well as public server

[vale falcon]

What nonsense are you talking about? The servers are community moderated

This community moderation is why public servers are so free

[prime oriole]

And that equals to public servers are run by the community?

[vale falcon]

I never said that

[prime oriole]

You just typed "public servers are run by the community"

[vale falcon]

I meant regarding moderation

Well-known troublemakers are kicked instantly and friendly names are welcomed

My point is that despite Joon’s ramblings about “von being pointless” is just nonsense that doesn’t account for the many many fans of public Zeus

Arma isn’t only for tryhards

Some people just like the sandbox

[pulsar marsh]

It is neither run nor moderated by community at all.
Maybe that was the original plan in the past but I pointed out everything already: #arma3_official_servers message

Dwarden is moderating the servers, responding to reports and taking immediate action where it is required. The situation speaks against your arguments and you seem to have a problem with that. The only thing providing self-regulation as you claim is the voting system and that hardly worked at all with public servers.

[vale falcon]

I personally like to treat it as a CoD lobby with an evolving story and combined arms, and my relative success as a public Zeus indicates that

[vale falcon]

Your point is true in some gamemodes yes

Public Zeus is not subject to the above

[pulsar marsh]

It seems fruitless to repeat that I am speaking of public servers in general and especially warlord. Zeus is just one part of it and I did not belittle zeus servers at any point, so I see no need to feel offended by reproach such as "atrocious", "rumbling" and however everyone feels about it. People don't need to like truth, they can either face or ignore it but rarely change it.

I doubt Zeus players account for the majority of players in Arma community but I do see the value of it. In my opinion the very same reason why we have wl redux and koth servers too. This supports creative minds and help new ideas being born there.

[pulsar marsh]

Zeus requires someone to be admin, with this in mind there would be no need for moderation but they recently disabled certain scripts as I heard in these very channels weeks ago and this means Zeus servers are now subject to moderation too, at least just a bare minimum compared to warlord where things get very emotional quickly

As I mentioned, Warlord was once much less restricted too. I still remember we could vote for admin but that did not work well and has been disabled at the end, just like global VON as Dwarden once said.

[drifting pelican]

I'm not saying people don't want the servers in the state they're in now. The people who want it this way far outnumber those who don't. New players see it as the original culture of the servers. I'm just saying that it brings degenerative and undesirable traits with it.
If we take television to be an analogy, Discovery Channel used to have shows like Mythbusters and How It's Made. Now it has Auction Kings and Vegas Rat Rods. Would it be any surprise if the average aspiration of its viewers went from astronaut to TikTok star?

[pulsar marsh]

Won't be any better if parents let their children watch stuff like SpongeBob SquarePants. Countless scientists proved this harms your children's abilities few years ago and it doesnt just affect you a little. 💩

[ruby lion]

So... What happened to the Western Sahara servers?

[vale falcon]

Once again, the public Zeus scene has been nuked by this change. It is now practically impossible to play public Zeus and have a good time

[fresh pawn]

I personally don't find that true. While yea some of the funnier bits (people going the speed of light with music playing around spawn or Vietnam music in a helicopter) have been removed, I haven't had that much of an impact with how fun or how bad the game is. I've been having a great time when playing public Zeus servers.

Plus discord servers (such as this) or steam calls can still keep you in contact with your squad voice wise

[vale falcon]

Probably because you always talk with text chat. Anybody that actually values human interaction disagrees. Any life that the Zeus could possibly bring is now gone. The communication between teams in a firefight is gone. Hell, even talking in vehicle to designate targets is gone

[vale falcon]

No it can’t. You cannot change voice channels fast enough which is absolutely crucial in good ops

Sorry to say but good Zeus ops are impossible and I’ll die on this hill no matter how many shills shill for “Bad Bohemia Decision #73838292616 (tm)”

[fresh pawn]

I've always used voice, but now that that's gone yea it's annoying but I haven't had that much trouble in typing. As I previously stated discord servers can keep you in contact with squads or your team

[fresh pawn]

Again, discord servers, get some of the main dedicated players to get into a discord server separate up a couple of voice channels, boom you can have communication between squad commanders by hopping into other squad channels, squad comms, team comms, and Zeus comms

[vale falcon]

How do you expect to change channels like you used to

[fresh pawn]

Easy, discord overlay

[vale falcon]

TLDR: you can’t make it smooth

[vale falcon]

Overlay breaks a lot of games for a lot of people

Not to mention how Arma is so intensive that other programs kill it

I have a fairly mid-range pc and I have massive problems even using Firefox in the background

[fresh pawn]

I've had crashes but I haven't had that bad of a time with running discord and Arma?

[vale falcon]

Playing music at the same time freezes my audio driver for a few seconds

Discord is not a replacement for von

Not a practical one anyway

[fresh pawn]

No but it's a good substitute

[vale falcon]

Again it’s not

[fresh pawn]

Would you rather use TeamSpeak?

Discord is a good substitution for VON imo

[vale falcon]

Even if it was how would you coordinate 18+ players with high turnover to join the server in the first place

It’s not gunna happen

[fresh pawn]

I've had it happen in a match

People said they made a discord server

About 8-10 people in the game joined

Split up squads

[vale falcon]

But that simply isn’t fun

I don’t want to wait 2 hours just to get a trash op going

Just put von back nothing was wrong with it

Dev team are just making excuses to kill their servers

[fresh pawn]

No it's a genuine problem that I can see why they did it

[vale falcon]

“Oh no they have my ip, now they know what city I live in assuming I don’t have a vpn or proxy”

It’s superficial

Or maybe, get this, if the game was developed properly this wouldn’t be an issue in the first place

[fresh pawn]

I can see why they did it, there is already a problem with steamers getting swatted and if it happens to random people that just want to play the game, that's a bigger problem.

[vale falcon]

And since they can’t figure out how to solve the issue they go for the nuclear option. Just like they did with scripting.

[pulsar marsh]

I share that opinion, there is Mumble, TS3, Discord, Overtone and probably more I don't even know of. I don't see why they should all fail as "substitute". Nobody intends to replace integrated VON permanently but I don't get the point why people reject it with all might instead of adapting to the temporary situation.

[fresh pawn]

With VON I can see why they did it. While a bit on the extreme end I see why they did it and I personally don't have a problem

[vale falcon]

Because it doesn’t solve many issues at all

Global and side channels are split for a reason. Vehicle and direct are split for a reason

It isn’t possible to do that in discord effectively and you can’t expect everyone to have it or even want to join some stranger’s discord

[fresh pawn]

You can hop in and out of squad channels, or like with a convoy vehicle channels. Whilst yea there isn't a way to fix direct (without mods) I personally haven't given too much thought to it all and I also haven't had a problem with joining discords, steam calls or just typing in general

[vale falcon]

Good for you. Not my opinion or many other people’s

Now go away

[fresh pawn]

Yo don't gotta be rude man

[vale falcon]

Or I shall taunt you a second time

[late kayak]

you have clear sticky and repeated explanations ... do you need warning ?

[vale falcon]

Nah I saw it I just don’t think that’s the real reason

[late kayak]

!issuewarning 556492350038474763 ignoring the warning about warnings and creating w/e theories on crystal clear subject

[sudden perch]

Done.
Flabbergasted NFT Monkey#6533 now has 8 infractions.

[vale falcon]

What rule does that fall under?

[gray kettle]

still there

[vale falcon]

That isn’t flame baiting either btw

[fresh pawn]

Check pinned messages @vale falcon

[late kayak]

!mute 556492350038474763 14d

[sudden perch]

Silence!! ò_ó
...
I keel u, @vale falcon!! Ò_Ó
Flabbergasted NFT Monkey#6533 now has 9 infractions.

[gray kettle]

Completely forgot that you could just add people in your squad into a steam group chat and use that as voice, actually good idea.

[fresh pawn]

You can also repeatedly play with those players by adding them if you liked playing with them. Me and a couple people have recently done it.

[gray kettle]

Guess not as bad as you'd think it is of a situation.

[ruby lion]

They're not showing up for me 👀

Nevermind, they do now. They weren't showing up for the last 2 hours

[pulsar marsh]

Achmed the dead terrorist 🤣 👍

[sudden perch]

[pulsar marsh]

This is exactly how I met some good friends to play with. They invited me, we created groups in Steams and Discord. I'm looking forward to meet more new people because Arma is a lot more fun with lot of people. Especially if things get personal between Blufor and Opfor 🤣

[pulsar marsh]

I heard they added voice some time ago but I failed to test it

@late kayak Sorry to bother you with shit but is your bot's avatar a poring by any chance? lol

[late kayak]

?

[gray kettle]

It's pretty decent

[pulsar marsh]

That avatar heavily reminds me of some monsters from a very old game called Ragnarok Online. The resemblance is crazy.

[pulsar marsh]

Really good to know just in case Discord ever decides to shut down too 🤣

Still pissed at Microsoft for destroying MSN messenger and Skype just to force everyone into Teams which I certainly won't use for games.

[gray kettle]

Eh Skype was horrid

Steam's group chat features were improved purely because of discord's existence

[pulsar marsh]

Hey, don't be too harsh, it was not bad by considering it comes from Estland 😆

Skype was a first cornerstone in the era of voice (not specifically speaking for games) and that is why MS just purchased it over night for cash.

[pulsar marsh]

Sounds exactly like what Dwarden told about TS vs Mumble 🤣 People only work under pressure haha

[late kayak]

discord.gg is improving cause guilded.gg is creating some pressure and let's not discard matrix, as it's voice works via RTT just fine too

[gray kettle]

competition creates a need to improve, more like.

[late kayak]

the problem of discord/guilded is they owned by corporations with bureaucracy laziness (we're big enough, tens of millions of users blahblah)

[pulsar marsh]

Indeed... Discord even plans an IPO, they should focus on their "success" with more innovations instead

[gray kettle]

"too big to fail" mentality

[late kayak]

that leads to basic problems like 1000+ bots joining in one second with same name, not being solved after 7 years since it was pointed out as issue first

[gray kettle]

though I feel like activision blizzard proved that you can be too big and still fail

[late kayak]

the bigger the heavier and the faster one can reach terminal velocity while falling into abyss

aka the cost of just running ineffective stalled corporation

[pulsar marsh]

Just think of Boeing, their legendary revamp to focus on stock skyrocketing and fire everyone trying to save their asses with raising red flags aka quality managers 💩

Far worse than Blizzard with common issues most companies still have, some just hide it better

[pulsar marsh]

Aside from their common weakness, what else to consider before testing it? Any significant contras vs discord?

[late kayak]

for me guilded feels chaotic,clunky ... hard to organize into readable/usable enough ...

[pulsar marsh]

lol

[late kayak]

so whatever you see <<< there and >>> there , is worse by them

[pulsar marsh]

Ok, copy that. We just stay with Discord 😆

[gray kettle]

Guilded's pretty alright if you think of it like enjin is for arma units

just a good place to organize your community/unit

but discord's slowly covering that aspect with events and other stuff so slowly becoming kind of useless

[stoic stirrup]

You cant play music on discord, you cant stream youtube on discord (audio will muted), Discord is a pain sometimes.

[prime oriole]

For someone with a name called nft monkey you think he wont be annoying?

[main jolt]

Apparently he's muted

[pulsar marsh]

He has been muted yesterday, coming back to chatty life in 13 days. He played poker with Dwarden and lost the game.

[prime oriole]

Pft

[gray kettle]

Hey Dwarden, would it be possible to enable direct communications back on pub zeus(for direct text) or is that an unfortunate casualty with turning off VON? It'd be nice for general use.

[pulsar marsh]

I think a different channel doesn't change the fact of security issue coming along with von and p2p networking

[pulsar marsh]

Looks like I was misunderstanding something. Is direct channel completely disabled on zeus servers? I rarely use this channel in wl so I can't tell right now

I thought it was just von that has been disabled on all channels

[fading bison]

von AND direct chat has been disabled on all official servers

[pulsar marsh]

Good to know, thanks for the update

[gray kettle]

ye direct chat would be good to have and is for some reason no longer there, which was what I talked about.

[late kayak]

reason direct is disabled is same as for VON

[gray kettle]

bruh

that was p2p aswell?

[hearty tartan]

Direct VoN is VoN.

Direct Text is not

[pulsar marsh]

After hearing that, we should be happy we still have chat after all. Imagine desperate communication with map markers because people refuse to use substitutes 😅

[late kayak]

i seriously considered to disable markers and drawing at some point (crashes, exploits, vulgarities) 😁

[stoic stirrup]

"You tearing me apart Lisa Dwarden" - Arma Community

[pulsar marsh]

Don't mention it, I can feel your face expressions whenever you see that crap 😂.

[late kayak]

we fixed the crashes and exploits ...

can't fix the d drawing ... it's military afterall

[pulsar marsh]

I sometimes had big urges to think of things like how to hack warlord just to add an eraser secretly to your weapon arsenals and enjoy the convenience of Adobe features to spare you from clicking delete a hundred times on the map... The player's pride is everything but for a map eraser, one small exception sounds very tempting 😆

And I believe an improvement to the feature of "mute" additionally affecting chat as well as map markers would bring peace to many souls. Too bad even "easy" solutions often require lot of work behind the scene.

[prime oriole]

There are the rare cases. But yeah

[late kayak]

rare ? if there is military vehicle or installation, you can be sure there d pic somewhere in or at it 😁

[prime oriole]

I mean of actual good artwork on the map, like the one i posted somewhere in this discord

[pulsar marsh]

Let me see that, please find me your link 😆

[prime oriole]

Just type LNP in the search

[gray kettle]

So is direct text p2p or is it unintentionally disabled...?

[pulsar marsh]

lol wtf, we should provide them wacom tablets 🤣

I think I've seen that somewhere long time ago too, pretty sure it was the same guy who drew that, looks very similar

[fleet terrace]

Von still disabled?

[prime oriole]

Still on the wheelchair

[fading bison]

How about a box-selection tool on the map, so you can erase everything in one fell swoop?

[gray kettle]

then you'll never have drawings on the map at all

as people love deleting all the drawings on the map because it's le funny to do while on the move

and there's no way to see who's deleting

[strong rain]

is there going to be a fix to the vc in the near future?

because official servers are dead and or dwindling

[paper sedge]

no

[pulsar marsh]

I stopped bothering to give markers to the team if someone keeps deleting like a moron. I just switch the channel to group or something to make it less visible. No idea if that helps but its enough to have my own markers for myself in worst case.

[pulsar marsh]

What official servers are ya talking about? wl servers are still overcrowded at certain hours

[prime oriole]

Such as?

[half stone]

so official is dead?

[prime oriole]

He's doing the "game is dead" shtick that your typical gamers do whenever they see a server that isnt populated at the time

[half stone]

let me rephrase my previous comment.

so pub zues is dead?

[gray kettle]

who knows, but pub zeus is still populated as usual

probably like 3 players less on average

[half stone]

well i answered my own question. still no voice chat and one 14 player server... see yall next month when i try again

[gray kettle]

aight

community servers are still a thing

just saying

[half stone]

I’ll look at some of those next if I can

[wraith mural]

Wow! All the Zeus servers are empty... R.I.P. #vongate

[gray kettle]

Seems populated to me.

[pulsar marsh]

Interesting how the smaller part of this community is still trying to host some sort of drama about VON while the majority adapted to the temporary situation and keeps playing, having fun as usual. I fail to understand what they expect to achieve. Doesn't bring back VON any second faster. If people really stayed away in big numbers, BI would speed up things because empty servers are bad business but they are not empty. Our dear Zeus buddies will have to get used to be one part of the public servers and not the biggest at that.

[kind hearth]

So how do y'all suggest I play Arma 3? I'm new to pc and got Arma about a month or two ago and zeus was where it's at for me. But without easy comms the thing's a nightmare full of trolls and noobs 🙋 that don't know where to look for chat box or don't know how to open chat box etc. It's a mixed bag of all things not good for smooth game experience. Ngl bro, it feels like a big deal... But please guide me in another direction for fun that doesn't make my rig run like sweaty monkey cheeks

[prime oriole]

By doing the bootcamp,reading the controls and trying them out in the editor. Everytime i see new players ask questions that always boils down to "read the controls"

Even with easy comms, the game is full of trolls and jackasses

[gray kettle]

can't outright say due to rules against advertising, but go to the server browser and filter by "zeus" gamemode and you'll find what you're looking for.

[silent anvil]

Pretty much, there's good alternatives if you want voice!

[thorn heath]

anyone know a server for zeusing that has voice enabled?

btw which servers have scripted compositions enabled>? @gray kettle

[gray kettle]

out of the official ones or community ones?

[half stone]

None of the servers have voice. communities have set up servers that are better and basically the same due to it. Can’t list any bc rules.

[thorn heath]

official

[gray kettle]

#zeus_discussion message here you go, list made by somebody in #zeus_discussion

[thorn heath]

tnx mate

[rich sphinx]

Is there anything in the works to add voice in the near future? I understand the players who always only typed to begin with are fine with it, but I was just curious if something was going to be applied soon. 👍

[pulsar marsh]

It just has been disabled for safety reasons, we had VON to begin with. (temporary, estimated time to fix = indefinite)

check pinned msg and search for Dwarden's statement in search

[rich sphinx]

I saw why it was disabled but figured I’d ask if anything was coming for near future. I was hoping to see voice channels or something. Thanks. 😁

[pulsar marsh]

Lets hope they will fix it soon or later (but tbh, its peaceful without VON in public warlord, feels like the quiet before the storm lol)

[plush trout]

why dont they just set up voice channels in here?

[prime oriole]

Have you scroll down?

[pulsar marsh]

@late kayak
WL EU01 Player named Harold (thanks to steam, screenshot did not work and he was auto-kicked before I could use other substitutes)
If you check time 21:31 and 10min backwards, you should be able to grasp the situation.

On top he started telling our positions in global chat and killed innocent friendlies who did nothing to him. Troll rage of the finest quality.

[lapis bridge]

Why is the voice chat disabled

WTF

[pulsar marsh]

Out of kindness, telling you this once:

1. Mind the rules of this channel
2. Check pinned msg of Dwarden
3. VON disabled for safety reasons (temporary)

One guy already received a warning and 14days mute, I doubt you wonna join him. Keep cool.

[lapis bridge]

You didnt answer my question

Plus who are you? some "@user" what are you gona do tell on me?

[gray kettle]

doesn't need to tell on you, mods browse these channels

[lapis bridge]

I just want to know why there is no VC in offical arma3 servers!! :(

[gray kettle]

If you want VON there are community servers for the zeus gamemode that have it enabled.

[lapis bridge]

Does anyone know why its disabled?

[gray kettle]

check pinned

[lapis bridge]

"safety"

[gray kettle]

Yep

[lapis bridge]

Why hackers getting IPs from VON

?

[gray kettle]

because it's P2P

[lapis bridge]

This sucks

[pulsar marsh]

@gray kettle Thanks...

[stoic stirrup]

Its probably the same user that got ban/muted/left few days ago

[lament kiln]

discord is confusing to me, how can i find dwarden's pinned post?

[prime oriole]

How long before another one asks why is von disabled

[lament kiln]

ah thank you.

[pulsar marsh]

This is the best opportunity for the channel bot, detecting key words and copypasting same link over and over again lol

[digital tangle]

So its been a while, can we make memes about VON being disabled now

[pulsar marsh]

As long as memes and no rumors or emotional nonsense, you should be safe 😇

[digital tangle]

when no von

[prime oriole]

Good luck with that

[pulsar marsh]

One can always try to play poker with Dwarden, you never know the outcome, its the nature of poker 🤣

[sand iris]

https://forums.bohemia.net/forums/topic/237996-voice-over-network-von-disabled-on-official-servers/

[pulsar marsh]

The next asking about VON after this announcement should prepare himself for a round of happy slapping. 😆

[quartz osprey]

Why is the VON disabled?

Ducks and Hides

[gray kettle]

Because I said so

[lilac quail]

Because they think their saving people by turning it off

[novel osprey]

Player Safety

[pulsar marsh]

To be correct, it's not just like they "think" its about player's safety, it is about player's safety. The small difference: nobody cared before. It is one thing to be paranoid about safety and another how real the thread is.

You don't wonna know just how many companies, government and institutions still fail to provide proper cyber security until something happens. Recent events show how easily their "security" can be breached and what insane amount of personal data (and very delicate ones too) can be harvested within few minutes. It's not just a simple matter of privacy anymore. And let's not mention how many people provide their data with Facebook willingly that NSA would be better off by reading profiles instead of using illegal backdooring and pretext like patriot act 🤣

[violet oasis]

why is viop disabled

[hearty tartan]

Open your eyes and read

[craggy geyser]

@late kayak eu0x desync and server issues at 23.10-ish GMT

(koth stress test server)

[hybrid marlin]

eu0x is literally unplayable

either a cheater using scripts or the server completely died

[hybrid marlin]

if you manage to fix the "security issues", can I also ask groups to be brought back to Warlords? it should be much simpler to fix a bug that allows one to get infinite bots than fix the issues of a P2P system

[solar jackal]

CSM

[late kayak]

dynamicgroups can't be fixed , i would need to rewrite that function

[acoustic agate]

do i need to pay for additional dlc to play this online?

[gray kettle]

nope

unless you try to play on Tanoa or Livonia you'll be fine

[acoustic agate]

seems like every server listed requires some sort of dlc

[gray kettle]

i hope you're not mistaking DLC for mods.

People really like modding the game.

[pulsar marsh]

You are able to play most of the servers without further DLC but certain gears, weapons, vehicles and especially jets will be restricted until you purchase the specific DLC that comes with it.

Ofc you won't be able to join servers providing certain premium maps as Lankercool explained. Most servers are still running with basic maps.

[acoustic agate]

ok thank you

and yes i know the difference between dlc and mods

[vale falcon]

If you do play online i do recommend you get the dlc in a sale or something

[gray kettle]

Apex that is

The more minor dlcs depends on your fields of interest

[pulsar marsh]

Indeed, e.g. Tank and Jet DLC will be essential for warlord players

[fleet terrace]

von back yet?

[gray kettle]

no

[digital tangle]

Man i hate von im glad they removed it bad feature 😈

[solar jackal]

i just finished making a nice zeus game

everyone was mostly happy

[digital tangle]

Thats good

[hybrid marlin]

where did the test koth go? I don't see it in the server browser

[late kayak]

was restarted with new test server

[lilac quail]

What is the test server testing?

[fading bison]

VON is working in the test KOTH, but not the other modes?

servers*

[hearty tartan]

We're testing something there

[hybrid marlin]

hacker on warlords eu #01 @late kayak

entire server killed, game basically crashed

I don't understand how this type of cheating is fun
I can understand how cheating in competitive fps titles like csgo can be fun, but just crashing the server, why? what are the motives??

[late kayak]

it's just plain griefing and trying to demonstrate they can, ofc w/o telling us what why when how

[hearty tartan]

Laughing about destroying other peoples fun.
Some people have fun in that

[pulsar marsh]

Today's hackers normally hack for the sake of competition and to show ignorant companies/gov what kind of crap security they have (if they have any that is...). I never heard of any serious hackers crashing game servers and enjoying this crap. We are speaking of trolls with their own understanding of "fun" by taking away the fun from others. Just like good old bullies who stole your toys in primary school 😅

[pulsar marsh]

Hackers normally leave a msg of the details because they know we cannot capture them anyway 🤣

[pulsar marsh]

we shall have pity with them because these guys will never experience real fun.

[late kayak]

i mean sharing some details about exploit, it ain't always easy for us to figure it out ...

the scene has changed and those days those who could talk don't have balls to speak

it easy to crash MP games ... i could do it to nearly any title if i wanted but ... i just don't see any reason or fun in it

[late kayak]

but we never claimed A3 netcode was perfect ... it's public knowledge it came from era of p2p legacy code and thus it's mainly lot of patches and glue and workarounds to work well enough

[solar jackal]

its actually simple; detecthacksenabled "1"

[pulsar marsh]

I'm pretty sure there are enough hackers who are the real deal but they would see no merit in attacking Bohemia servers unless you know of some evil scheming in backstage you now have the chance to speak of and come clean 🤣 👍

And I believe you 100% that you could crash some servers anytime. I think we would experience something far more serious such as the one attack happened to Sony. They lost billions of dollars because someone or a group managed to shutdown all their servers for at least one full day.

[solar jackal]

no one is "attacking" the servers, the game engine is like swiss cheese.🤡

[pulsar marsh]

Emmentaler power edition servers 🤣
I'm just speaking of how a serious hacker would cause damage. They wouldn't just bitch about one mp server, they would shut down all servers or even cause serious damage which keeps Bohemia busy for the next weeks.

[stoic stirrup]

Probably some butt hurt player that angy cuz von is disabled

[pulsar marsh]

Yeah lol

[late kayak]

all large WL servers restarted and KOTH stress test too, note, VON is back (but fixed), so report if there are issues