I took a look around at the arma3.com site and watched all video's available. These are my thoughts so far:

Pro's

• Infiltration (stealth?) options, finally!
  
• Customizable weapons: ever had that claustrophobic feeling when looking through that 10x zoom scope you started a mission with, when you're up and close in a village 15 minutes later (or vice versa)? No more of that
  
• Adaptable gear; always wanted an option screen like in good old Rainbow Six or Swat 4.
  
• Improved vehicle physics, though that's not something I deem that important for this kind of game.
  
• Even bigger environment = more sandbox to play in
  
• Anti-material rifle shooting through a motor block disables a vehicle, great!

Cons

• Changing uniforms and customizing weapons seems to go too fast to be realistic.
  
• Enemy AI doesn't seem to be improved: some moves are just plain 'shoot me' invitations.
  
• Same old command-and-control interface; I was hoping they'd finally redesign it.
  
• Same old voice and music.

Hopes

What I couldn't learn from the site but am hoping for:

• Change everything in my con list (hey, I can dream :p)
  
• Better, more exciting stealth play (stealing uniforms is great, but I hope it'll go beyond that).
  
• Anti-material rifle _really_ working as anti-material, like shooting through a wall (or just tear a chunk from it)
  
• Smoother animations (climbing a ladder never looked stiffer in Arma games).
  
• Remove high command, I never liked it; or at least don't provide any high command missions in the campaign.
  
• Don't exclude vital equipment in the original game for release in an expansion (no advanced weapon optics in Arma 2 original kinda sucked)
  
• Standalone, user friendly mission editor and language syntax (like the one in OFP: Dragon Rising).
  
• Bug free? *cough*
  
• No extra DRM measures

As it stands now this looks more like an Arma 2.5 to me than a new installment. Ok, there's a new island which may justify the version 3, but other than that there's nothing really major. Still, I'll gladly spend 50$ on what will certainly be another simulation thrill.

Any additional thoughts are welcome. Just keep it civil, but I know you will ;-)

Well that sums my thoughts up pretty much. I just hope they'll include all the bugfixes we've seen recently in Arma2, like on the AI or performance front.

Other than that, a native 64-bit exe would do arma a world of good, since then it could acces much more memory. And No game needs memory more desperately than Arma.

Frankly the modifiable weapons part is great, especially when it comes down to Planes and helicopters. Needing a seperate Aircraft for a different weapons loadout is bad. I mean coming from a Flight sim that always bugged me.

The Anti-Material Rifle being Anti-material is good, it was always kind of strange when you shot at a truck and could only disable it by shooting it's tires, never the engine. It would be good if we get a real penetration model, especially for tank combat. Also it would be really good to get something like the CITV and the IVIS for the tanks. The CiTV is just better than the CROW. I hope we'll get Night vision sights for the sniper rifles, I don't like the thermal ones to much, and I hate that the L-115A3, my favourite Rifle, doesn't has a NV-scope.

Yeah but I'm cautiously hopeful for Arma 3, even if it feels somewhat of an upgrade instead of a full new game. On the upside though, all Bohemia games have been good on the gameplay for money value.

With the gear customization ability, this is the first ArmA I've ever been interested in.

And, yes, please acknowledge that everyone now has a 64-bit OS.

I wish they would make voices quieter when in a stealth situation as creeping around but having an AI team memeber talking loadly on comms ruins the immersion. Not one game does this.

Absolutely. The only game that ever did stealth comms right was Splinter Cell and to be honest, it really didn't do it right, either.

ArmA 2's AI have used quiet voices in stealth for as long as I can remember.

I would mostly like more fluid movement for characters and a better action menu system. That was the one thing I did like about the OFP2 series was the easy command interface/menu (just too bad the AI was dumb). Also I would like to see a better lighting system as it's very simplistic and seems kinda buggy; but it's not a game-breaker.

All in all I'm pretty excited since BIS is really taking it serious and seem to be working non-stop to make sure the primary flaws from previous Arma games are fixed

Have they? Oh I'll have to go and check now lol

Hmmm, not in my ARMA2 they don't. Still talk as loud as ever.

Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising has whisper voices in stealth.

Are you ordering combat mode -> stealth?