Hi! Just letting you guys know that there's an Arma 3 Giant Bomb group that meets every weekend to play on a private server, and that if you'd like to join in we'd love to have you. We usually run them around 3pm EST on Saturdays - a compromise to establish a reasonable time for both EU and NA players. We aren't a super hardcore group, but we do play the game tactically. We like to get the job done but hopefully have a laugh doing it.

Lately we've been having a lot of fun with Zeus. For those who don't know, this is a recent mode added to Arma where up to two people become what is essentially the dungeon master of a session. They create a storyline and scenario and modify it on the fly as the players progress through the mission. Lately myself and @gpbmike have been taking turns running story-based campaigns each week. @thurbleton has streamed our antics a couple times, so you can watch that here if you're interested in getting a rough idea of what we do.

Details on how to join in are always posted in the event each week on our Steam group, So join the group to be notified of what's going on week to week in Arma and whatever else Giant Bomb would like to do on a personal computer.

Might take a break from revision this weekend to join you guys. ArmA is good fun.

HOLY SHIT! I wish i knew about this sooner! Im totally on board, i wish my schedule worked with everyone else's though. I work on an overnight schedule, thus i sleep during the day, but I will definitely try to sleep in such a way to play with you guys.

@bollard: Awesome! Would be happy to see you there.

@MeatsofEvil We could fairly easily move it to 4pm sometimes if that helps at all? Hope you can make it in any case.

I keep seeing that notification pop up on Steam when these start. I really need to get my hands on ARMA 3. Shit never goes on sale.

I own ArmA 3 since the early access release but always lacked a group of people to play with and have absolutely no experience (played the first episode of the campaign, I guess?) but this sounds interesting and is at a time I could easily attend (thank you for choosing a EU friendly time as well!). I've watched some of the stream and for example have no idea how the channel stuff on the radio etc. etc. works but I'd be into learning some ArmA. I've joined the Steam group and if I'm not too anxious too join because I'm scared I will fuck everything up, I might give it a go!

@akrid: Nah dude it's cool, 3pm will probably be better anyways. ill probably have to quit out early so i can sleep a bit before work, but we'll see :p

Hello Akrid, do you want to play ArmaA 3?

@thatonedudenick: Yeah, probably going to not be a sale for a while yet unfortunately. Maybe when they release some of their planned payed DLC it'll get marked down, but there's no real ETA on that.

Nah there's no chance you can fuck everything up, so don't sweat that. The game has quite the reputation for being some sort of incredibly complicated experience, but I don't think it's really that hard. I think just about anyone can pick it up fairly easily. We can help you with the radio and anything else you're not sure about.

@thurbleton and @darksaw who are the two mainly featured in that stream are quite experienced so it may give the image that we're super hardcore, but the other squad in that particular session has significantly less time with the series, so you'll be in good company in learning.

@akrid: Sounds good, I'll try to join this weekend, but it'll be close because I got some stuff to do (does it make sense to join later or is that difficult because you're already going?). If not I will be there next weekend!

@iron1c: If we're talking a matter of 10-20 minutes late, you may not miss much. Usually that time is taken up by us doing a briefing, picking loadouts, and planning things a bit.

If you do come late, it's not a big deal really but you might be a little lost as to what is going on.

Man, I haven't played Arma in six months but I kind of have the itch to do it again. I put in close to a hundred hours during the alpha/beta period and had a lot of fun (when I wasn't on a server with a hacker). I just played the vanilla version of the game though, so I don't know anything about Ace or Acre which I'm pretty sure you guys use. Hopefully the game has ironed out some of the weirdness that happened back in the day.

@subjugation: The game is quite stable now comparing to both the Beta and the Alpha, and a hell of a lot of features have been added too. Zeus is fantastic for one.

We don't use ACE - it still doesn't exist for Arma 3. There was a couple pretty poor ACRE releases but now the big thing for radio is Task Force Radio, which we do use. Which reminds me, I should edit my original post with that fact!

OMG I'm totally interested. Give me a reason to play this game cuz those altis life servers are fucking stupid.

is there a way to subscribe to updates from the group? so I know when stuff is going down?

I'd love to, depending if you're willing to bury the hatchet though. I did long ago.

@hero_swe: whoa, it certainly has been a while. Sure, come on back!

If you happen to be online when we post notifications it'll pop up. Unfortunately you're just gonna have to check yourself otherwise, but we do our best to keep things at the same time each week anyway, so barring complications we will always be playing Arma at 3pm EST on Saturdays.

The missions you've crafted for the community are really well done. I've had a real blast the last few times I've played, they just kept getting better. The more people wee get, the better these can become, I feel :)

Might have to check this out

@akrid: Its all good. I'll try to pay attention to whats going on.

@akrid: If your Zeus sessions are as good as they sound then I might be able to bring some more interested people in for em.

What is this weird game ?

@hero_swe: Who has been blabbin' that they're "good"?

So you're the one to blame Akrid...

Hi peoples, I just joined the steam group. I've been a fan of arma for a few years now, but I always felt I was missing out by not having a bigger group of people to play with. Until now I've just did small coop stuff with friends or jumped into random games.
I'm in the middle of my final exams at Uni, but I look forward to joining in with the group in another few weeks. I'm especially keen to see what people do with this Zeus stuff.

@alexw00d: Wow, so mean Alex.

Good luck on your exams man, looking forward to playing with you!

@akrid: Akrid, do I want to be on Dev branch still?

Had fun despite my early issues getting the radio installed and changing from the dev build to regular Arma. I still think my radio was not exactly correct. I was hearing the other squad too. A lot of my Saturdays are busy but I'll definitely jump on if I have a chance next time.

damn this thing was over before I even woke up...

My internet died after an hour or so, but after everything was set up correctly it was weirdly organized fun. I've never had anyone giving me orders before. I'll definitely try to join as many of these as I can!

I didn't know about this. I've been playing quite a bit of arma lately, so I'll try to play in a couple of weeks.

@iron1c: @jnal: @bollard: Was great to have you guys play, although I feel the mission didn't turn out like I'd hoped. Sorry about the long preamble as well - we haven't had an issue in months and got complacent, haha.

@akrid: That's cool! I still had fun. The only thing I would have said (not to start an argument about it again), but regarding the newest version of TFR, people were saying if everyone upgraded the server would have had to been upgraded and it would have been a nightmare. Anecdotally, everyone who was using the new version could hear each other fine, and as intended, even if the server was out of date. It probably would have worked fine, the only thing actually causing problems was people being on different versions, not the new version.

That said, downgrading wasn't much hassle at all, so it doesn't matter (and I know you guys said you'd upgrade for next time anyway). Plus the old version worked far better than the first time I used it when it kept randomly dropping in the game and the positional stuff went wonky.

boysef on steam, i'd love to play with you duder's, I REALLY suck though....so fair warning

Free this weekend on Steam. We should get a game set up in the next couple days. I'd like to play with you guys.

I hopefully should be able to make it tomorrow. Need to run a bunch of errands so we'll see. Hopefully we get a bunch of people due to the free weekend.

Hot damn this is awesome, I'm definitely up for this when I can find time. Is it acceptable/possible to jump in half way through a session? If so, how long do they normally run for?

@thatonedudenick: Sorry I didn't catch you earlier - we did play on Saturday. Did you buy in?

@mexicanhatboy You're welcome to join late, but it's obviously best to get in from the start to get the full context of what you're doing. It'd be a good idea to ask your squad leader what's happening if you join in late.

We usually aim for roughly an hour - quite short as far as these things go.

I would really like to join too. Just bought the game this weekend...

So... Please say this week's session will be using this: https://store.steampowered.com/app/288520/?snr=1_702_newreleases_

Might check in and see what everyone's up to. I recently fell back heavy into Wasteland on ArmA 2 though.

i would love to join you guys