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WORLD WAR THREE ROLEPLAY
ArmA III Edition
World War Three Roleplay has traditionally run multiple iterations inside of Garry’s Mod on numerous roleplaying frameworks, focused on text-based roleplay with the limited toolset available on the legacy Source engine to support it.
ArmA 3 provides support out of the box for a variety of features that Garry’s Mod has, since forever, been unable to provide, starting from:
- Realistic medical systems and weapon systems.
- Large, open world support.
- Land and air vehicles, as well as proper vehicular combat.
- Et cetera.
These features within ArmA 3 make it an highly appropriate fit for a roleplaying game set in the setting of a war of any sort.
This brings a great, mostly concerning question about how roleplaying could be done in the setting of ArmA 3. The game is known for running multiple military-simulation groups playing a variety of scenarios in both PvE as well as PvP settings, using mostly voice chat for communications.
With this in mind, ArmA 3 does have a rather large roleplaying community, with certain servers having over a hundred concurrent players at times, offering an enjoyable and yet immersing environment for all who are interested in playing.
The translation of these concepts into a PvP setting is slightly more complex, but relies mostly on similar concepts - voice based communications, serious but mechanical roleplay, et cetera.
The application of these concepts has become widespread enough that it is widely used in other games, such as Grand Theft Auto, DayZ, and so forth.
Another advantage in Arma is that the game is designed to be immersive, a vital factor to roleplay. Immersion ties into gameplay, as such a person who joins the server receives the full experience the moment they join. Rather than being forced to roleplay, a person is encouraged by their environment.
It is immediately obvious to anyone looking that something similar has not been done in a similar setting. So while we cannot find an immediate comparison, it is possible to rely on comparing the concept to a mix of concepts including it to some degree, and take the best parts of each to create an appropriate framework:
Altis Life, ArmA 3 Project Life, Et Cetera.
ArmA 3, as mentioned previously, has numerous city-based roleplaying games. For the majority of servers running such gamemodes, they do indeed have rules to normalize an immersive environment, such as requiring players to have valid roleplay names and to roleplay as playing a character, rather than themselves.
Taking the concepts of mechanical roleplay - immersion being produced through genuine in-game mechanical actions as opposed to typed actions (e.g. /Me commands) provides an environment to which players can react in real-time.
ArmA 3 Mil-Sim Clans
There are numerous mil-sim “units” within ArmA 3, which provide structured groups similar to a military force of some type, with realistic weapons, vehicles, ranks and so forth. They provide highly intensive operations using ArmA’s systems, such as the Zeus system.
Creating a reactive environment in what is usually (but not necessarily) a PvE setting can often prove to be extremely engaging for all players and oftentimes these units can also approach an highly-immersive roleplay scheme. However, we cannot copy the rigid mil-sim structure, as it is not as appropriate gameplay wise for a large server that will run mostly without intervention.
DayZ Roleplaying Communities
DayZ has had numerous roleplaying communities rise up, offering many different settings, similar to Garry’s Mod. However, DayZ is considerably closer to ArmA 3, offering much better insight on the ways in which roleplay servers can be run within the games. It is notable that some of these servers completely transform the game into a different setting, e.g. STALKER.
Some DayZ roleplay servers have queues lasting hours - proving there is a large community for this type of roleplay outside of Garry’s Mod.
ArmA 3, as mentioned previously, has numerous city-based roleplaying games. For the majority of servers running such gamemodes, they do indeed have rules to normalize an immersive environment, such as requiring players to have valid roleplay names and to roleplay as playing a character, rather than themselves.
Taking the concepts of mechanical roleplay - immersion being produced through genuine in-game mechanical actions as opposed to typed actions (e.g. /Me commands) provides an environment to which players can react in real-time.
ArmA 3 Mil-Sim Clans
There are numerous mil-sim “units” within ArmA 3, which provide structured groups similar to a military force of some type, with realistic weapons, vehicles, ranks and so forth. They provide highly intensive operations using ArmA’s systems, such as the Zeus system.
Creating a reactive environment in what is usually (but not necessarily) a PvE setting can often prove to be extremely engaging for all players and oftentimes these units can also approach an highly-immersive roleplay scheme. However, we cannot copy the rigid mil-sim structure, as it is not as appropriate gameplay wise for a large server that will run mostly without intervention.
DayZ Roleplaying Communities
DayZ has had numerous roleplaying communities rise up, offering many different settings, similar to Garry’s Mod. However, DayZ is considerably closer to ArmA 3, offering much better insight on the ways in which roleplay servers can be run within the games. It is notable that some of these servers completely transform the game into a different setting, e.g. STALKER.
Some DayZ roleplay servers have queues lasting hours - proving there is a large community for this type of roleplay outside of Garry’s Mod.
ArmA 3 has a wide variety of addons from the get-go to complete the immersive experience we are looking for without harming performance too much, alongside with optional client-side addons which can improve the experience further for anyone who is willing to sacrifice the framerate.
Anything that hasn’t been made yet or requires modifications can be created or modified - ArmA 3 is highly moddable using its scripting engine.
Arma is a game in motion, it changes dynamically. Many actions don’t need to be planned in advance, they can happen in a moment - the principle that actions have consequences. This translates into a far lower amount of necessary staff involvement, as players shape the environment themselves.
Players can organize themselves and be assisted by the team behind the project to do what they want, without having to work through a bureaucracy.
Another good point to address is that the staff team and volunteers will have access to a much wider variety of event-related tools, which will help in creating an immersive, fluid environment.
This is one of the parts which are directly translatable from Garry’s Mod. The lore can be imported into the game without issue, as well as the factions, with an even wider variety of options for players to pick from.
Similar faction and rank structures can be explored and even expanded, including new things such as aerial branches for using helicopters and further exploring the concept of combined arms, in comparison to Garry’s Mod, where the main activity of most detachments still was infantry combat.
As an additional example, combat engineers may be able to genuinely create mobile outposts in the fields and use mines for their factions’ advantage, pilots may be able to quickly transport and extract troops and medics will be able to perform their roles using much more in-depth systems.
As promising as everything above sounds, there are numerous technical restrictions, common problems that communities face and community concerns from inside of nebulous which need to be addressed, and as such, this section aims to hopefully provide some solution or answer those.
Server-side Performance Issues & Lag
It is often addressed that ArmA 3 servers suffer from a lot of server-side performance issues and lag, however, it can be observed in many of the more popular servers that this is not always necessarily the case.
It seems that a lot of these performance issues can be mitigated with appropriate configuration of the server and settings, as well as careful addon selection and creation. It is notable that many common mods on the workshop can be optimized if they prove to be causing an issue.
Certain mods which only act on the client can simply be whitelisted on the server and run exclusively on the client.
Moderation & Rules
The general gist of the roleplay rules wouldn’t be much different than they are in Garry’s Mod by terms of sticking in character, and so forth. It isn’t any harder to moderate an ArmA 3 server than it is moderating a Garry’s Mod server in the same setting and the same problems would arise.
For example, handling the issue of new players running outside of the base in a WW3RP setting isn’t any different in ArmA 3 than it is in Garry’s Mod.
Greenlighting from the Community Management
There is sufficient support from the community management team in order to commit this project into nebulous should the community be willing to give it a try. We’ve been discussing it unofficially and the only roadblock from continuing is support from the community - not the management.
ArmA is not good for Gunplay and PvP
That’s completely false. There are many, many servers running PvP game-modes within ArmA 3 and these used to be the most successful servers for a while. Immersive gunplay is more than supported both through the vanilla game and a variety of addons which improve it, both serverside and clientside.
ArmA is a cheater’s heaven
Unfortunately, it is correct that BattlEye is slacking behind to some extent in ArmA 3 specifically, however, it works more than appropriately enough to stop the majority of people from cheating within the game. There are additional anti-cheat solutions that can be implemented if additional mitigating actions prove to be necessary further into the project.
What if it doesn’t work?
That’s okay. We’ll take this as a learning experience and move onto other things. This doesn’t mean the end of Garry’s Mod or text-based roleplay in nebulous, but simply an attempt at something different. If we take a few weeks and see that it isn’t going anywhere - we’ll seek something else.
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