Soldiers,
it's been a while since the last news. It's finally time to break the silence and share whats happend, what will happend and most important - the release date!
Army Ops is around for quite a while and has undergone some major changes over the years. The long lasting silence is an outcome of those. We where not happy with the quality of the game, the code has gotten to bloated and the game was lacking and identitly and clear direction.
We fixed those issues and set out a clear path!
Army Ops will be a spirtitual successor to all America's Army games with it's own ideas mixed into!
We will take the best from America's Army 2, 3 and Proving Grounds and combine them with new and fresh ideas. We won't carry over every design aspect of every America's Army game and will make cuts and changes which my please the one and angers the other. But we think those changes will pay out!
We need to do our own thing while paying heavily tribute to America's Army. We will present all changes to the community and communicate all changes with all of you. If the majority (and not only the loud part) disagrees, we will alter the design!
TACTICAL TEAMPLAY
Army Ops is a grounded PvP shooter, blending between Close quarter combat experience and open terrain combat. The game focuses on teamplay and will prioritize team and mission oriented actions before kills, even more then any America's Army game before. This will be due to the ...
UNIQUE CLASSES
Each Team is setup of unique classes which are crucial to it's teams success. The game will feature the classes Rifleman, Sniper, Medic, Pioneer and later also Support. Right now Rifleman and Sniper are implemented with the rest to follow. All classes are designed to work together even tighter then before.
Our game changer is the Pioneer.
Maps will be more dynamic then before. The pioneer can lock down doors and close up a path for all players. Only another friendly or OpFor Pioneer will be able to unlock the path. If your team kills all OpFor Pioneers while at least one of yours is alove, you can deadlock certain paths. Or the pioneer blows up a wall and permanently opens a new route for the rest of the round.
PROGRESSION
A unique and rewarding progression system is the backbone of Army Ops! Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Honor and your gameplay stats will be tracked and will define your overall Rank! Friendly fire, civilian casualties or working against the team and it's mission objective' will have strong negative impacts on your rank. Higher ranks will grand you access to additional equiement which is balanced for specific roles and actions.
Army Ops will not feature a battle or season pass, your Rank is persistent. There will be no traditional maximum rank, it will naturally grow and keept the playerbase closer together in terms of unlocks and progression.
Here is an example with made up values: Army Ops is releasing and the maximum Rank is 30. Content Update 1 is added to the game and will increase the maximum Rank to 40 while adding a new Weapon or Tool to unlock at Rank 35.
GAMEMODES
Army Ops will support:
- Operation (12v12) - either as Exfiltration or VIP variant
- Team Deathmatch (6v6)
Not all modes may be available at launch and more will be added over the lifetime of the game.
MAPS
Army Ops will feature a variety of new and old maps. While we know you would like to see all classic America's Army maps brought over to Army Ops, this is not entirly possible. We can carry over maps but we will need to make changes to it's setting and layout (copyright) and buildings maps takes a lot of time. Army Ops can't have 20+ maps at launch but eventually get there over time!
We selected a few maps which will be reimagined and set up a roster of new maps as well. Here are they:
WEAPON DEPOT
Reimagining of the classic AA2 map Weapons Cache.
Status: playable
BRIDGE
Reimagining of the classic AA2 map Bridge.
Status: playable
HEIST
A new CQB focused mission inside a bank.
Status: playable
UPCOMING MAPS
BIO LAB (Hospital reimagination)
DERAILED (new Map)
SUBSTATION (new Map)
CASTLE (new Map)
BLACK GOLD (Pipeline reimagination)
And many more ...
MISSION EDITOR
Army Ops will provide an detailed ingame mission editor which allows easy but flexible creation of custom missions. Host your creations in a P2P lobby or on a dedicated server and share it with the community. When you join a server with custom maps, you won't need to download any new files to your system and wait in long download queues - it's instantly available!
The Mission editor won't be available at Early Access start and will be added in a future update.
SERVER & SECURITY
Play on Dedicated Servers or host your own Peer-2-Peer Match!
Army Ops is partnering with 4NetPlayers to provide powerfull Gameservers to all Army Ops players. Rent your own Server, host it on your own machine with the Windows Server Files or just start a Peer-2-Peer Match right out of the game!
Army Ops will use a multi layer Anti Cheat System. Easy Anti Cheat will be used in combination with a robust reporting system and the ability for server admins to fully maintain their server with a local ban list.
PLATFORMS
Army Ops will be for now PC exclusive with console ports following later. The game does already run on Switch and Xbox. Crossplay will be fully supported but can be modified on server level and filtered out via Serverbrowser.
We value the community and a heatly server status extremely high. For this reason Army Ops will never feature any form of Matchmaking! Host your own server, it's listed in the Serverbrowser and build your own server wide community with your rules and your own map rotation with user made maps!
Army Ops will release in several stages!
Stage 1
March/Early April - Playstest 2
Play Army Ops via Steam Playtest for another weekend.
Stage 2
5th May - Earliest Access
From this day on you can play Army Ops whenever you want. Those who already have access to the full game on Steam can play via Steam, everyone else can use a standalone Non steam download to play (requires Epic Games Account)!
Stage 3
2nd half 2022 - Steam Early Access
Army Ops will now be fully available via Steam.
Stage 4
When it's ready - Final release
Army Ops will be free!
It's just free! No micro transactions, no ingame store, no paid DLCs! You will be able to enjoy Army Ops without paying any money for a long time. We will offer the option to support the game via Donation DLC's and will with each major update release a extremly limited boxed version of the game (only available via Polygon Art and no other online Store).
At some point in development, we will reach Army Ops 2.0 and this is the time console version will release and the game will transistion from entirly free to a one time purchase (~15$). But until then, it's fully free!
Army Ops will evolve and grow with the Content Packs system. As Army Ops does not have a Battle Pass or any Seasons, we won't release in fixed intervals and rather when an update is ready.
Content Packs will contain, as the name suggest, new content. This content can be Weapons, equipment and or Maps. Those Content Packs will have a name and theme, for example 'Special Forces' and will add content around this theme.
We plan on having at least 3 of those Content updates before we reach Army Ops 2.0. In between those Content Updates will be regular patches improving the game.
A full roadmap will be listed once it's suitable to share it. For the sort therm, we plan to replace the old M4 and AKM model in the game with those new and high quality models:
They should be ready for the next Playtest.
Q: Will there be trainings like in America's Army 2?
A: No! We had them in but replaced them with a more in depth progression system we will share details on soon!
Q: Will there be a Honor level?
A: Yes, but it's just called Ranks in Army Ops with is calculated by your Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Honor and other gameplay stats.
Q: Are statistics beeing tracked?
A: Yes, with the Steam Early Access start Stats and Ranks will be recorded after a completed match. An external website with soldier profiles might come at a later date.
Q: Will there be ROE?
A: Yes! You will get heavily punished for friendly fire and playing against the mission objective and can loose ranks.
Q: Will there be Unlocks?
A: Yes you will unlock new weapons. Those are alternate variants with specific strengths and weaknesses. Attachements do not need to be unlocked.
Q: will there be VOIP?
A: Later, yes! Right now VOIP is just not high enough on the priority list but ingame VOIP will be added!
Q: VWhat about Mod tools?
A: We won't release a full mod SDK for now. However the ingame map editor will allow you to create detailes new missions.
Do you have more questions? Feel free to ask them!
Whislist Army Ops now:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/672660/Army_Ops/
We’d love to keep you up-to-date! Please join us also on Discord or on Facebook