1st vs. 3rd Person: Let's Brainstorm!

[MrGalactus]

I think "more immersive" should be added to 3rd person advantages. Or are we just talking shooters here?

 

[migo]

I usually split the genres up in to the platforms I own. Third person games are played on my Xbox 360, PS2, Xbox or what other console the game runs on. First person games, especially shooters, I only play on the PC due to the mouse and keyboard makes the games a lot less frustrating.

Call me crazy but I even prefer Mouse + keyboard even for Third Person Shooters. Maybe this is from my early experience with 3rd person Shooters with the likes of Max Payne, MDK, Heavy Metal FAKK2 and so on that I played on PC, but as far as I'm concerned if mouse aiming is good in first person, the same principals apply in third person.

I think this myth of "Third person shooters are best with gamepad" is more down to how traditionally console games had the higher proportion of third-person shooters, that are of course played predominantly with a gamepad.

I suppose I only prefer a gamepad for racing games where you pretty much absolutely need an analogue stick of some sort for the steering.

Depends on the shooter. If it's a third person shooter that makes use of autolock like Tomb Raider or Crackdown, it's better on a console. If it requires you to actually aim, yeah mouse is better. Keyboard also helps if it gives you the option to strafe and turn, which you can't do with an analog stick.

 

[Treblaine]

Depends on the shooter. If it's a third person shooter that makes use of autolock like Tomb Raider or Crackdown, it's better on a console. If it requires you to actually aim, yeah mouse is better. Keyboard also helps if it gives you the option to strafe and turn, which you can't do with an analog stick.

Yeah, but some shooters on console may use lock-on-aim but I still think they'd be better with completely free mouse aim. Take a look at all the best speedruns of the likes of GTA4, most are on PC for just how brutal you can be with mouse aim, so quickly moving from target to target, headshots everywhere.

Even where lock-on is practically a necessity due to game design (Tomb Raider) I still find mouse-aim preferable simply because it is a quicker and more naturalistic way to look around. It's the smooth controlled movement and also snapping around that I - in my personal opinion - find is a much better analogue of human vision, thumbstick I always found more fitting for controlling a tank or some robotic perspective.

 

[migo]

In Tomb Raider you're not using the mouse to look around for her, you're using it to move the camera, so it's not the same thing. If you're doing a game where you're always behind the character, I think mouse does work better, but if you can circle 360 degrees around the character, I don't think it ends up helping if you have mouse aim.

 

[BlumiereBleck]

I like both....no future games should ever use one. Games should use both like Bethesada!

 

[mrwoo6]

I always thought for a 3rd person based cover system a good idea would be that when your took cover it should show a still-shot of the last thing you saw. You could still blind fire, but it would be just that, you'd be guessing were to shoot instead of insta headshotting despite not being able to see around the Conner.

It doesn't have to be a still shot, it could be a blurry screen, a foggy screen, a broken camera look, wire-frame.

hell anything but crystal clear images of behind the wall your ducking behind.