I hope Bohemia can implement some if not all of this stuff. I think EVERYONE can agree that the system needs to be improved.

One thing: HoldUse would open up a menu perfectly serviceable by hotkeys.

ACE’s “Tap your interaction, E for Examine, D for Drag, G for Gear” works pretty damn neat, they could seriously look there with the menu pop-ups.

Thanks for using your voice to direct attention to these broken systems. I hope a lot do as I and back it up.

I have been killed countless times in game for this stupid action menu, and i fully agree with the idea to remove it.

This could have been fixed right off the bat with radial menus. I just can’t believe we’re still living in a world where scroll menus and that sort of garbage is the common way of getting stuff done.. I mean.. How have we not embraced radial menus? Hold down Alt while pointing at a chopper, SHAZAM, circle of options around your reticule, drag the mouse in the direction of the option you want and release Alt, done. NO! Evidently scrolling through a messed up menu that changes contents as you move.. that’s how we’re gonna roll..

Anyone who has ever spent any time working in Maya or similar will know the insane power of radial menus. You could easily make a voice command menu with dozens and dozens of macros that would take you literally a second to get to once you know where the different ones are.. Hold down X, menu pops up around cursor, up is assist, left is spotted, right is reply down is whatever. Drag it to the left, reply menu opens up around cursor giving you lots of different replies. That’s only one level deep. you could literally make as many layers as you’d need in a menu system like that. Spotted>Vehicle>Tank>T72 or spotted>infantry>Anti Tank team etc etc.

Sooooo need to kill the whole ArmA UI. Either that or make it moddable enough that people can fix it themselves. The UI and the net code are the two main reasons I’ve yet to get back into ArmA 3. Bought the alpha, played 30 mins, haven’t touched it since.. Bought OFP on launch day, every other game since. Feels like I’m done with the series now, though. They’ve had a decade to fix net code, AI and UI, and those three things have not changed at all. Nothing has been done there.. Blows my mind. Here’s to hoping they might spend some of that DayZ money on a network programmer and a UI designer. (Not happening.)

Agreed in every aspect, especially on the point: “If you let the modders build it, it will come.” If BI (for whatever bullshit reason) doesn’t have the time or money to implement this, WE WILL!

I completely agree with dslyecxi if the claim they want to make this a better experience with smooth infantry tactic’s why are these old systems in here sadly i will be disappointed if this game comes out with no change to the action menu.

I like the idea of 2 radial menus separating interaction with external and internal world. So:

1. Radial menu for external world/objects (With a color palette resembling the color used for outlining the object you are interacting with)

2. Radial menu for internal decisions (With a different color palette so that there would be an intuitive distinction between the two.

Make Radial (1) so that when looking at e.g. bay of an APC you would be able to just tab the use key (Lets say tab “E”) and the default action would be activated (Default action should in this example be “Get in”) If you were to hold use key (Now holding “E”) you would get radial menu 1 with extra options for the particular object. Also there could be displayed a non-intrusive text to tell you what the default action would be (Maybe able to turn off in settings when you get used to the defaults?) This way you would always know what tabbing action key on an object would do.

You would only need to bind e.g. “E” as external interaction and “Shift+E” for internal.

Could not agree more! It has to go! Well not go, per say, but not be used for everything.

Back in 2001, the action menu in Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis was not as much of a pain in the anus since it A) didn’t force you to dick around with doors and B) the lack of control/gameplay complexity compared to the Arma-series made it slightly less convoluted. For its time, I certainly didn’t think it was a bad concept at all, but could it have benefited from an action-key? Absolutely! It wasn’t perfect even back then. Then again, how many military simulators existed for the home user market before 2001 with such level of depth as Cold War Crisis?

As for Arma III… YES! OH YES, I completely agree that the action system needs some serious refinements! The ability to easily and smoothly interact with squad mates with the press of ONE key is PARAMOUNT in hectic situations when you just want to heal or drag someone away from harm’s way, but adopting an improved context-sensitive action key system for everything else as well would make the deal that much sweeter!

Please, Bohemia Interactive, consider implementing Dslyecxi’s idea into Arma III! It would seriously enhance the game experience and make A LOT of people happy..

The action menu is a catch-all. That’s the be all and end all of it. They’ve been heaping more and more code on top of the same basic game for years without refining, or rebuilding their API. I say “API” because that’s really what they’re building: an Application Programming Interface. The application just happens to be a game.

While many may feel that it’s really great to see how easy it was to port over all their old mods and scripts from Arma2 to Arma3: there are many others who are familiar with the series and who may be game developers, software engineers, webmasters, or mechanical engineers that can see this is in fact bad practice. In most circumstances: the various methods, properties, classes and objects built on a previous version of software are redacted because of redundancy, or re-engineered to be more efficient and/or effective. This has never been the case with Arma.

People have been able to all but copy and paste code from one version to the next. This leads me to believe that the core game functionality – the meat – has not really changed. There’s just been more and more assets and functions added to a system that feels at times like it’s ready to burst.

This results in a sloppy experience for gamers, an unnecessary use of processing power on user systems, and over-engineered implementations of core game-mechanics/functions that (no doubt in my mind) end up manifesting themselves to Bohemia development cycles as costly overhead.

Personally, I don’t think I need to offer a solution to them. I feel that the epic multitude of successful games in the genre doing it in a completely different way should be evidence enough that the current mechanic is a broken and lazy implementation. I also feel that as they are the professional game designers and developers (in that order) that a robust, useful, responsible, and API enabled solution could be engineered by them with relative ease.

I can offer an outline of system I use in my day to day operations to solve similar issues:
1) Establish the base desired functions in context – we’re talking low level here. Figure out what it is that the users/players are attempting to accomplish. At a base level, you must fulfil this need. If all goes to hell, and the project fails due to internal politics, or technical failures: you must be able to pull this portion off. This to me: is the current Action Menu System. It works – and that’s all it does. You should never aim to accomplish just this portion. This is called MVP – or “Minimum Viable Product”. Successful and legendary products are never MVP! Pick any of your favourite products or services in life and honestly identify if they simply met the base need. They exceed it everytime.

2) Identify the desired outcome. What is it that the user is trying to do, and how does he expect or desire it to occur/function? Dslyecxi’s video identifies most of these points. When the user identifies an object he wants to interact with by looking at it in relative proximity: he expected to be able to perform a standardized action against that object. If additional actions are available – they should be accessible. Never turn the table on the user by giving disparate methods to achieve the same result. eg: Door 1 is at the top when I open it, and now to Close it: Door 1 is at the bottom of the list.

3) Figure out what your users are accustomed to using to get the job done currently. Read that sentence again without thinking of Arma – and just think about F/TPS’s. It’s a no-brainer. They use context sensitive keys, or very explicit menu systems with limited, and intuitive navigation requirements and functions. If you wanted to think about it in terms of Arma itself: you need only watch Dslyecxi’s video to see what currently is used.

4) Address the issues with the current system. What about this process is cumbersome? What do you like? What don’t you like? What works and what doesn’t? The order of these becomes important in this step. If we had started out here: our users would have been continuing the rest of this discovery process with a bad taste in their mouth while simoultaneously keeping their minds firmly rooted in the current system and un-receptive to new ideas. By asking them what (not how) they do, and then how they want to do it – they are more receptive to new ideas, but at the same time will be able to clearly identify the goods and bads of the current system

5) Present a simple idea. A few key points with minimal moving parts is key to a good design. This is as true in games as it is in software design, auto manufacturing and space flight. Massage the idea a bit to get it into the shape you want – and then determine if it fills most of (if not all) of the issues from items 1-4. If it does, then and only then do you begin to do a deep dive to prove that it is indeed a viable solution. Here, and only here can you start getting in to the technical nitty-gritty. Commit to it! If the design is solid, and you believe in it: then you must adhere to it whenever possible. Those that are not on board need a re-adjustment, or restructuring may be required. No lone gunmen allowed.

This is just some basic process analysis that is geared towards interfaces/user experiences. It’s nothing new, and businesses have been doing this for the better part of 50 years.

I apologise for the long-winded response, but it’s something that I’m passionate about. I’ve worked very hard to become successful at what I do using this process in every project.

Bohemia, you got this.

I showed Arma 3 to my brother, trying to get him to be a new player and teammate. The first thing he said, action menu is to clunky for him!

DO BIS devs actually play the game?