Are FPS's dumbing down gamers?

[JediMB]

Okay, I can not for the life of me imagine how one gets lost in the Normandy or in HL2's train yard. The Normandy is so damned tiny, and pretty much all of Half-Life 2 is designed in a way that makes you find the right path even when it gives you an illusion of multiple choices.

For Fallout 3 and Rivet City (oh, I remember wandering down the side of the river/coastline/whatever, exploring... good times), I don't see how anyone who actually observes his or her surroundings could miss the button to have that bridge extended. Not exactly the most puzzling part of the game.

I argue that most people play games to get away from strenuous thinking.

Exactly. Isn't that why they made Doom?

Doom? You mean that game with an overabundance of dark mazes, key hunting, and the occasional switch puzzle?

As much as the genre has evolved in the last 15 years, Doom really involved more thinking and justifiable difficulty than a lot of the current mainstream titles.

 

[irishstormtrooper]

FPS's aren't dumbing down games, consoles are. I own both a PS3 and an 360 so any comments about me being biased can go fly a kite.

Pray tell, how do consoles dumb down gamers? Pardon my ignorance, but I'm trying to find out why I'm suddenly a gaming moron.

 

[boholikeu]

This may be from my own personal experiences... but do you think that modern first person shooters are dumbing down gamers?
I have 3 examples of this. *snip*

Those aren't examples of your friends being stupid. They are examples of bad game design. The player should ALWAYS know where they need to go next (or at least where they should start looking). Essentially, anything that isn't supposed to be a puzzle (IE getting off a spaceship or getting into rivet city) should be blatantly obvious to everyone that plays the game. If it's not it ruins the flow of everything and can lead to frustration (the last think any developer wants for their game).

This is also why game design is MUCH harder than the average joe thinks it is. One poorly placed entrance/exit can completely ruin an otherwise well made game.

 

[SonicSoulstrike96]

No. It's just that fps gamers generally like to get to the action and forego the man-on-alien drama, or have to walk around through some futuristic ship just to go talk to somebody

 

[FallenJellyDoughnut]

PS: this is also my first ever thread post.. so.. eh.. be nice =P

GLARBLEARBLEARGLE SEARCH BAR ************!

In all seriousness, I'm lost on that bloody space station too, yet I don't play anything like Call of Duty or Halo. Your friends are just natural morons.

Good ol' natural morons! Also that sounds like a good band name for an alternative rock band.

 

[Acaroid]

This may be from my own personal experiences... but do you think that modern first person shooters are dumbing down gamers?
I have 3 examples of this.

The first example is my brother (aged 14) playing mass effect. i had told him to play it as he didnt know what game to play and i loved the game. i leave him to play it for 1 hour and come back to see him playing call of duty world at war. i ask him 'why did you stop?' he replied 'i got to the part where your on the spaceship and you have to tell the pilot to bring us into dock or something.. and i got lost on the ship so i gave up' this suprised me as the normandy isnt exactly the most complicated place to navigate through. He is an avid call of duty player and is usually used to being carried along on a leash through a level me thinks... and i was his age when i played mass effect, so it cant be the fact that its just a confusing game can it?

The second example is my friend who just started playing the orange box and i told him to start the half life games. (yes i know its an fps, but i like to think its the thinking mans fps)The next day I ask him how far he got.. and he said 'i dunno.. i got out of the train station place and was outside.. then i got lost.. so i gave up and went to play call of duty'. im not blaming call of duty at all.. its just a coincedence that thats what they went to play.

Third example (and my personal favourite) is when another of my friends was playing fallout 3... some time after he bought it and started it, he called me and asked 'ok.. ive been outside rivet city for 20 minutes and i havent a clue how to get onto the bleedin' thing!' This amused/disapointed to no end, so i hung up on him. Also a Call of Duty player.
Now im not sure if this is an actual problem, or my friends are just complete morons... but i couldnt help pin it on the obvious connection between them all.. first person shooters..
Discuss
PS: this is also my first ever thread post.. so.. eh.. be nice =P

Some people are just better at directions and working out things.

I have always had a really good knack and playing old fps type rpg's where almost every screen looks the same. I can navigate my way around really well, while my friends are looking at me playing thinking "wtf how did you know where you are going without the map"

I dont think it is a FPS thing, i think it is just 3 people who arnt good at problem solving and navigation.

Rivet city was annoying at first, and it takes some searching, luck and a little problem solving to find it. I could see how someone could over look it... but why they didnt have the brains to google the awnser i dont know, it seems what most people do now days when they are stuck lol.. I remember the days of having to wait for mags to come out to get the walkthroughs XD

 

[Makeshift Koala]

Ok, so the general consesus is kinda split... well about my friends being morons anyway (no need for the 'no offenses' as these are the examples of them being morons and I havent got any problem with you guys calling them morons XD)
apparently theyre not the only ones who these occurances happened too... then again, a vast majority of you think of these incidents as moron worthy.. so i dont know what to say to the people they occured too =P

Onto the main topic though, it seems i was being a bit too harsh on fps's. Its not particularly their fault for people who play them being morons. its just a matter of taste in games.. and i understand what people meant by me kinda forcing the first 2 cases into a world they are unfamiliar with, they were never really into playing the games, its just that i told them to do it and they were in the mindset of 'i'll play this game and then see what i think' rather than 'this game looks awesome! i cant wait to really get into it' which is probably the best way to go into games like mass effect and half life..

But it could also possibly be bad design on the games fault, taking it from the perspective of the people who did get lost. Im sure that people who love rpg's and never even play fps's got lost on those parts, and it was a little narrow minded of me to blame it on the fps's because the only time this occurred to me was with my fps playing friends.

The main point you guys have made is that some people play games for pure fun and action (first person shooter for example)and some people play it for a more narrative affair (rpg's) so its not particularly idiocy for a person from the first group to play an rpg and not like it. or to get lost because theyre used to games they usually play holding their hands all the time, not just first person shooters, but a majority of modern games that have a linear progression style rather than an open world progression style.

 

[unacomn]

I would have to say that yes, the FPS is responsibility for lowering the IQ bar of gamers since Doom. By offering no mental challenge other than hitting the kill button, the brain tends to go on sleep mode and stay there.
Not all shooters are like that, but generally the ones that brake sales records have little to do with thinking, and more to do with killing stuff.
The worst part is that it makes people want to play games such as these more. That's why System Shock sold didly, even though it was a work of art, being a first person game, it got brutalized on the market by Doom 2. And that was back when you needed a few extra neurons to run a PC.
Now, well, Idiocracy pretty much nailed it.

 

[JediMB]

This may be from my own personal experiences... but do you think that modern first person shooters are dumbing down gamers?
I have 3 examples of this. *snip*

Those aren't examples of your friends being stupid. They are examples of bad game design. The player should ALWAYS know where they need to go next (or at least where they should start looking).

...No, they're examples of his friends being stupid.

Mass Effect:
You're told to talk to Joker, the pilot, about returning to the Citadel. The very first piece of dialog in the game is with Joker in the ship's cockpit, so I can't imagine how someone couldn't know where to go. (If nothing else, it's just common sense to know that the cockpit is in the front of the ship, while the engine room is in the other end.)

Fallout 3:
You want to enter Rivet City. The entrance to the ship is right in front of a tower, with a bridge pulled back. Where the bridge would connect to the tower, there is a button. Push the button.

 

[Pyro Paul]

the 'Hide n' Heal' method is a common system seen through out the Halo Series, Call of Duty series, and Gears of War Series.

Halo doesn't use that, as the shield is different, as plasma weapons take it down fast, and ballistic weapons kill faster when dealing with someone without a shield.

halo 2... hide in corner. regain full health.
halo 3... hide in corner. regain full health.
halo odst... hide in corner, regain full health.

Halo does use that.

infact, the only halo that doesn't have it is the Orginal Halo which had a regentive sheild ontop of finite health.

 

[NickCooley]

the 'Hide n' Heal' method is a common system seen through out the Halo Series, Call of Duty series, and Gears of War Series.

Halo doesn't use that, as the shield is different, as plasma weapons take it down fast, and ballistic weapons kill faster when dealing with someone without a shield.

halo 2... hide in corner. regain full health.
halo 3... hide in corner. regain full health.
halo odst... hide in corner, regain full health.

Halo does use that.

infact, the only halo that doesn't have it is the Orginal Halo which had a regentive sheild ontop of finite health.

You're right with Halo 2 and 3. But ODST did have a shield over finite health. You have the outline of the health bar which was the shield and the main body of the health bar shrunk and changed from green to red when you took damage when your shield was down.

And sure its a bit of a cheap cop out but at least Halo tried to attach some reason to the system. Saying that when your shield goes down you can only take a few hits until you die. Unlike lets say COD where you can shrug off a .50 cal round by hiding in a corner.

Yeah its exactly the same system. But at least halo dressed it up pretty =P

 

[squid5580]

I spent bloody ages trying to get off the Normandy first time - I assumed that because you always start at the back, the exit was near the back. Actually, I've done all three of those things.

I spent bloody ages after the train station assuming that because Barney was helping you, he'd have given you a pass to somewhere in City 17. I also assumed that the Combine would be smart enough to block off an obvious side alley that gets you out of the major checkpoint hub.

Rivet City? Sweet Jesus H. Rastafari I could not find that button for love nor money! I actually almost killed myself several times swimming round the entire thing looking for an underwater entrance! My main problem with the concept of an extending drawbridge was that most stuff you can stand on in Fallout 3 is fixed in place.

I actually had more problems with those three areas because I overthought them. Where does that fit in with your little theory?

Man I have been screwed over so many times by that problem it isn't even funny. Spend hours trying all these different and complex things and the answer is the simplest.

 

[Unholykrumpet]

Depends on what you consider "using your brain" to be honest. I don't see getting lost on the ship in Mass Effect or Half Life and rage quitting as being a sign of idiocy. I don't consider having to run around a map trying to find where to go next a sign of a "thinking man's game". I consider it a sign of poor map design, and I'm annoyed by the developers when I get lost. And FPS's breed their own kind of intellect. Noting where enemy spawns are, flanking, watching your radar, watching where teammates die to know where enemy locations probably are, communicating effectively with your team, etc. It's kind of like FPS players have traded one skill set for another.

 

[Asehujiko]

any game which has the 'hide in a corner and suck your thumb' as a healing method is basically dumbing down the gaming community as it throws out any and all tactical and stratigic thinking. in all honosty, the removal of the health bar has really lowered the average attention span of players in those games.

Men of War has soldiers that start fumbling around with a health kit when they are behind cover and nobody is throwing grenades at them and that's an exceptionally complex(irritatingly so) game.

that is not the same thing. infact it is the complete opposit.

the 'Hide in a Corner and suck your thumb' healing method is a Regenative health system which will automatically heal you when ever you don't take damage over a certain period of time. by simply ducking out of combat for 2-6 seconds you'll be back at 100% health as if you where never shot in the first place. this removes the need to look for health kits, conserve your life, or think about other possible ways to a situation as so you can get through alive.

the 'hide n' heal' method supports nothing but blunt, full frontal assault methods and simply taking cover for a few seconds when stuff gets hairy. it removes all need to think and ultimatly forms a mear reactionary game much like whack a mole.

the 'Hide n' Heal' method is a common system seen through out the Halo Series, Call of Duty series, and Gears of War Series.

It's the same thing as your soldiers carry those med kits on them instead of finding them on the ground and they use them where, in an fps, they would regenerate instead. so they effectively have regenerating halth with a cooler animation.

 

[boholikeu]

This may be from my own personal experiences... but do you think that modern first person shooters are dumbing down gamers?
I have 3 examples of this. *snip*

Those aren't examples of your friends being stupid. They are examples of bad game design. The player should ALWAYS know where they need to go next (or at least where they should start looking).

...No, they're examples of his friends being stupid.

Mass Effect:
You're told to talk to Joker, the pilot, about returning to the Citadel. The very first piece of dialog in the game is with Joker in the ship's cockpit, so I can't imagine how someone couldn't know where to go. (If nothing else, it's just common sense to know that the cockpit is in the front of the ship, while the engine room is in the other end.)

Fallout 3:
You want to enter Rivet City. The entrance to the ship is right in front of a tower, with a bridge pulled back. Where the bridge would connect to the tower, there is a button. Push the button.

Sorry, but it's still bad design. While Joker does tell you to exit the ship, I'm not sure that he tells you to exit through the engine room. Also, while it might be "common sense" to a Sci-Fi fan that the engine room would be in the back of the ship I doubt it's widely known by everyone (as evidenced by the number of people having trouble finding it).

As far as Rivet City goes, I believe the button is actually an intercom, so it would be pretty easy to mistake it for just another background doodad.

Seriously, from a designer's perspective there's no such thing as user stupidity, only bad design. You can try to argue that people who miss these bits are just morons, but if it turns someone off to your game then you've still failed at your job as a game maker.

 

[knight56]

FPS's aren't really dumbing down gamers. Specifically at least. What is dumbing down gamers it's flooding the market that it's almost become standard.

 

[Blaster391]

There are 2 types of gamers:
1- The ones who play games cause they don't like football, being active and fresh air. Like me who tend to play:
HL2
Classics
RPGs
RTS (Not Halo Wars)
The diffrent/weird games. I.E Phyconauts

2- The rabid COD/Halo players who only play FPS's (Because their the only games of skill apparently) and don't understand much of anything.

Personally I like the classics Deus Ex ,ect because they actually needed you to use your brain.
Also RPG's like Oblivion cause I like free roam.

 

[Chipperz]

This may be from my own personal experiences... but do you think that modern first person shooters are dumbing down gamers?
I have 3 examples of this. *snip*

Those aren't examples of your friends being stupid. They are examples of bad game design. The player should ALWAYS know where they need to go next (or at least where they should start looking).

...No, they're examples of his friends being stupid.

Mass Effect:
You're told to talk to Joker, the pilot, about returning to the Citadel. The very first piece of dialog in the game is with Joker in the ship's cockpit, so I can't imagine how someone couldn't know where to go. (If nothing else, it's just common sense to know that the cockpit is in the front of the ship, while the engine room is in the other end.)

Fallout 3:
You want to enter Rivet City. The entrance to the ship is right in front of a tower, with a bridge pulled back. Where the bridge would connect to the tower, there is a button. Push the button.

No, that's bad design. If you don't look at the exit to the Normandy as you walk past it, it looks like another section of wall. I spent a long time thinking the exit to the shop would have been in the more logical location. The cargo bay, where everything needs to get out of the ship. And the first place you leave the ship from.

As for Rivet City? There's NO indication that the ship is Rivet City. The sign is on a ruined building with several manholes nearby. It actually makes more sense that it's underground. Also, the ammount of times that the intercom you have to press is used as decoration is amazing. I still think there should either be a sign on the ship or if you give the beggar a Purified Water he'll tell you what to do.