Arma 3 Alpha available on Steam for $30, improves movement

well its at its cheapest if you get it now. It gets more expensive if you buy the beta etc.

That's pretty much awesome to see explained, but i wonder how it plays.

It's nice and looks fantastic. It plays well, although over complicated controls that I can't customize the way it would feel natural to me, I need to use their forced clumsy ways.

But compared to previous games is plays smoother, but not yet fully optimized.

Psychomorph, is it true that is has cone of fire instead of freeaim? What about bullet penetration? Did they fix it finally or it's still as silly as Arma2/VBS2?

well as far as i know you have always been able to turn free aim off in arma but there is no conefire like in cod. There is a bit of conefire like you would have in real weapons but you dont notice that in short distances.

The Alpha is $0. It's called Arma3Alpha Lite. When you buy the $30 (€25) version, you are buying the Alpha, the Beta and the full game. Which is pretty cheap actually.
The movement and weapon handling have been greatly improved. The menus and controls haven't changed, which means you still have a million keys and combinations to use features which you might find useless.
Cqb is now playable but no way as good as R6, Ghost Recon or Inf. Pistol combat is now usable (it was just ornamental in previous Arma games, IMO).
You can adjust freeaim to your will, and as tomcat ha said, there is some conefire, but less than in CoD, and even less than in Arma 2. There is no bullet penetration, which can be a real pain like in all games. Cover and concealment work correctly, and so does smoke and using the correct stance.
AI is pretty good at flanking. Completing a coop mission objective requires planning, since it's almost impossible to complete them running and gunning.

The Game feels much smoother than ARMA2, And its still in alpha, so stuff like bullet penetration might be added in, There is also cool things like being able to adjust your stances in incremental ways.

OK, so it seems it's gonna be a decent project. What about actual modern weaponry? Can you use the REAL guns or you are forced only to use those pseudo science-fiction weapons?

Me bored, haven't played it for weeeeeks.

The game is boring because it has even less structures and buildings than Arma 2. It needs some Infiltration, Crysis 1, Crysis 2, True Combat, Urban Terror type maps. There's so much already made it could draw on. But what do we get? A bunch of empty land. The producers have absolutely no imagination and really don't seem to care much for their work. I get the feeling the company is mostly just suits looking for money. They seem to want to leave all the real work to the modders.

Nah, content will come along, this is just a small island for testing, it's Alpha software. But I find the fundamental mechanics of moving and shooting boring and still clunky to manage/control. This cannot be blamed on the Alpha status, because this will never improve, it's BIS we talkin' about here.

I can remember now why I stood away from ArmA games for so long. I only hope that the final full game will be good enough in a year, and community to fix it in two years.
In three years, the game may become actually good. BISiness as usual.

Absolutely agree about the movement. Still WAY too clunky. It doesn't feel natural, more like a clunky robot, and too many keys to do it. You still can't even do a small jump. Bohemia is just a bunch of suits who just DO NOT GET IT.

The thing that really gets me though is the sights and your eye distance from them. As in too much distance. Has to do with their FOV I see, but that seems screwed up as well. It's the same as usual. Here's a new game that will be in forever Alpha status! Modders, please come and save us if you can! Were too lazy to fix it ourselves and just want the money.

I've never seen devs ( well, except maybe the peeps that made Crysis 3 ), care so little about their product.