The 1.8 Major Update is here, bringing new features, gameplay improvements, stability fixes, and plenty of changes across the battlefield. We're also excited to announce that Arma Reforger is now available on the Microsoft Store with Xbox Play Anywhere support, allowing you to play across Xbox consoles and Windows PC with a single digital purchase.
One of the biggest additions in 1.8 is the first iteration of our new Far Hide system, designed to address situations where players hiding in grass at long distances would leave you completely exposed to enemy snipers. Turns out, lying perfectly still in a field isn't much help when the field disappears.
Far Hide helps conceal distant characters against areas covered by grass, so lying in a field should no longer make you stick out like a sore thumb to someone watching from 750 meters away. There may still be some tweaks we would like to make as we continue developing this feature, but we hope this first implementation helps reduce the advantage players had from vegetation no longer rendering at longer distances or when lowering graphics settings.
Concealment is also becoming more important when fighting AI. Grass and camo nets can now obstruct AI vision, making vegetation and camouflage more useful for breaking line of sight. AI should have a harder time spotting and tracking players now.
Your role within a squad now matters! In 1.8, several specialist roles gain advantages when performing job-related tasks, hopefully giving your Medic more purpose than before.
Medics can inspect and treat wounded soldiers faster and load casualties into vehicles. Logistics personnel can load and unload supplies faster, while vehicle crews can repair, rearm, and refuel vehicles more quickly. Engineers also receive faster construction speeds when building structures or deployables.
Speaking of building, field fortification has also received some quality-of-life improvements. You no longer need to throw an entire collection of sandbags onto the ground before constructing something (like sandbags). Having one available to begin deployment is enough, with the remaining required items taken directly from your inventory.
Players can also now deploy razor wire themselves, giving engineers another tool for blocking points or funneling infantry into more favorable ambushes. The PKMN can now be deployed on the 6T5 tripod, with or without the 1P29 optic.
We've added more options for communicating and coordinating without saying a word. New tactical gesture animations provide additional ways to communicate visually with teammates, as well as more casual loiter animations that give you something to do during the calm of battle. Sit down, do some pushups, or take a moment for a smoke before everything inevitably goes wrong again.
The US Army also receives underbarrel smoke grenades in several colors, giving grenadiers another way to screen movement or mark locations. Smoke mortar rounds have also been adjusted to remain effective for longer, making mortar-deployed smoke a more umore useful option for covering an assault, or at the very least making everyone less certain about what they're actually shooting at.
There are plenty of other additions and improvements included with 1.8. Here are a few more worth highlighting:
Running around without boots can now damage your feet and carries a small chance of causing your character to stumble and fall. So maybe think twice before charging barefoot across Everon.
Dying now costs 30 rank progression points, giving you another reason to value your life beyond the long walk back from spawn. Deaths caused by friendly fire will not penalize the victim's rank progression, and dying will not cause a player to become a Renegade.
Admins can teleport their camera directly to players and promote or demote players through the Player List.
MOB construction is no longer prevented simply by the presence of nearby enemies. So being shot at is no longer considered a valid excuse to stop building.
And finally, as always, we've implemented an array of new crash fixes, memory and pathfinding improvements, VoN updates, and other optimizations. Not the flashiest part of an update, but your PC or console will probably appreciate it. Of course, we've introduced more fixes and optimizations than we could reasonably cover here, so if you want, you can read the full list in the 1.8 Update changelog.
We hope you enjoy this set of new additions and improvements. Our work is not done, and we will continue releasing patches and updates over the coming weeks and months.
Features will continue to be refined, bugs will be fixed, and community feedback remains an important part of helping us identify issues and improve the game. Please report any feedback you might have through the Feedback Tracker.
We greatly appreciate your support and hope you enjoy the new version of Arma Reforger.
For more information about Arma Reforger, please visit reforger.armaplatform.com.
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