FPS games = unoriginality, but why?

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Magnuscell

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Jan 23, 2009
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Simply put FPS as a genre has been allowed by developers and consumers alike to stagnate because the most popular titles out there have all been sculpted around the same basic "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" formula

I've recently been playing Mirror's Edge and admittedly though it isn't a *true* FPS I'd like to see some of what that game has accomplished make its way into more mainstream FPS games, the motion feels very natural (most FPS games have you move more like a steadycam) I enjoyed the slight development of close quarters combat and it could just as easily work in a multi-player situation and whether we like it or not, the multi-player is where its at for the FPS genre, it is essentially the only way for your typical FPS to retain some replay value although it is my opinion that this is an artificial problem created by semi-linear storytelling in single player campaigns, games like Bioshock have tried to negate this but ultimately it still barely even makes another playthrough seem worthy because the decisions, risk and rewards just don't feel far reaching or of major consequence
 

DerekWillis

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Wicky_42 said:
cuddly_tomato said:
Even if we are playing as the grizzled space marine for the 1000th time, do we really have to be fighting mutant aliens again?
To be honest, for a while I'd actually be happy mindlessly blasting aliens, if only they WEREN'T ALL BIPEDAL! Seriously, why the hell can't we have some tripedal guys as the main enemies? Or maybe some half snake chaps? Or large armoured bulky centipedes? Why does every 'alien' race run around on two legs?

The obvious answer is that it's easy to animate something familiar, but that didn't stop Valve with their antlions (their front legs come out from their posterior, heh). Why can't we see more like that? And not just for boss gribblies. Grr, it wouldn't be too much to ask now, surely?
I have an idea, find a way to copy and paste the creatures from spore into FPS games!
Imagine, an epic with 3 machine guns!

Speaking of spore, did you know that there is someone who made a perfect replication of Pikachu? Imagine seeing that as an epic!
 

Wicky_42

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DerekWillis said:
Wicky_42 said:
cuddly_tomato said:
Even if we are playing as the grizzled space marine for the 1000th time, do we really have to be fighting mutant aliens again?
To be honest, for a while I'd actually be happy mindlessly blasting aliens, if only they WEREN'T ALL BIPEDAL! Seriously, why the hell can't we have some tripedal guys as the main enemies? Or maybe some half snake chaps? Or large armoured bulky centipedes? Why does every 'alien' race run around on two legs?

The obvious answer is that it's easy to animate something familiar, but that didn't stop Valve with their antlions (their front legs come out from their posterior, heh). Why can't we see more like that? And not just for boss gribblies. Grr, it wouldn't be too much to ask now, surely?
I have an idea, find a way to copy and paste the creatures from spore into FPS games!
Imagine, an epic with 3 machine guns!

Speaking of spore, did you know that there is someone who made a perfect replication of Pikachu? Imagine seeing that as an epic!
Hah, absolute genius! If the technology exists to slap together any creature from random body parts and then basically animate them automatically, modern modellers and animators have no excuse for being lazy with their critter designs; just use Spore as source material! If not to create the actual critter, then at least to make a working, animated source reference.
 

Jack and Calumon

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cuddly_tomato said:
Napoleonic wars (a la Sharpe), with muskets and flintlocks.
Muskets? The guns that take a minute to reload? No thanks.

cuddly_tomato said:
WW1, up over the trench with 30 buddies, all trying to get to the machine gun nest without getting perforated by enemy bullets.
Fair enough. Barely any World War one shooters on the market anyway, but the guns there are going to be all even less sexy than WWII guns.

cuddly_tomato said:
Pirates, specifically the boarding parts. Running around Friggates and stuff with those awful little pistol things, complete with explodable environments from all the cannon fire.
Good, but it would be first person sword swinger, like oblivion. Also with the pistols it's the whole musket argument again.

cuddly_tomato said:
Being in a SWAT team, having to raid random buildings in a city to rescue hostages and stuff. Even driving your SWAT van there and ordering your squad about. (kinda like GTA but with an FPS SWAT motif).
Sounds like Rainbow Six, but with a van, and free roaming. (P.S You might want to change the whole, "raid random buildings." thing. You wouldn't want to raid a random white house would you?)
 

Scarecrow38

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I'm going to respond by looking at each of your suggestions, both because I love rants and because there's alot to rant about.

First of all, a Napoleonic themed FPS. A large amount of the gameplay in FPS' is derived from the variety of weapons available. Even though there is alot of scope for originality in this time period, there were only single shot (crazily short ranged) weapons and swords. This would mean you would be limited to single shot, eventually repetitive and annoying, combat. I am also yet to see a multiplayer, sword fighting game do melee combat properly (when I say melee combat I mean a balanced duel, not hack/slash/ kill 20 grunts at once combat). So any game of this type is doomed from the start.

A WW1 themed FPS would have very thin, featureless maps where you could only move inside a small strip. Exiting the trench would be instant death as you get gunned down by unseen foes. Either that or you spend you time camping in a hole sniping helmets from 40 metres away. Again, repetition and non- flexibility which both spell the end for an FPS.

Pirates/ ship based combat. Very good idea in theory, alot of original concepts to be used. However it has the same issues as a Napoleon- era game. Sword fighting, in my opinion, just hasn't been done well in any multiplayer game. Most singleplayer games that feature it also have the hero destroying 20 grunts with one swing, but if you have 16 human players who can each do that it just leads to all sorts of messed up combat. Map size and variety would also be an issue (how many ways can you change a boat's appearance).

SWAT team scenario. True this could lead to some fun gameplay elements and some pretty awesome map design... but it's also a concept thats been done to death. Counter-strike, Battlefield 2: Special Forces in a way, Call of Duty 4 (some of the SAS missions et cetera). Despite the gameplay and weapon possibilities, you would be hard pressed to get an original story and some non- cliched (can't find the dash above the e) characters do be in it. [Though this exactly the type of game that could be successful nowadays).

Gameplay isn't really an issue with FPS', the problem is that there aren't any original plot ideas to use or gameplay friendly time periods to draw from. FPS' will always be successful because it draws from a particular target audience but as time goes on it's just going to become harder and harder for developers to produce a gameplay-friendly original FPS with sufficient character depth and a proper, complex storyline. It's just too many things to deal with at once.
 

cuddly_tomato

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Catkid906 said:
---snipped for space---
Please read the entire thread. It will prevent redundant posts like these. The point I was making is that coming up with fresh ideas is easy, yet the developers seem to loathe even attempting it.
DerekWillis said:
I have an idea, find a way to copy and paste the creatures from spore into FPS games!
Imagine, an epic with 3 machine guns!

Speaking of spore, did you know that there is someone who made a perfect replication of Pikachu? Imagine seeing that as an epic!
That sounds pretty awesome actually. These are the kinds of ideas the gaming industry needs. I liked the actual building of weapons you could do in Fallout 3, but it wasn't really an FPS game. I expect that will find its way into an FPS game soon enough. Of course the other problem with games is that as soon as a single developer tries something that works, all the other developers just copy/paste that into all their games. Look at regenerating health for instance.
 

DerekWillis

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The problem with GunZ is that it has the lag componant. For instance, I played it for a long time, only once did I get a head shot icon pop up on my screen. Problem was that I was aiming at tfeir feet. Other times it doesn't even hurt them. But don't let me get into the hackers deal. It is a good game, and if they had an unhackable consol version I'd buy it, but it needs a lot of refinement.
 

TheBadass

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I love how nearly every single idea people have thrown out an idea in this thread someone points out a game that's already done it.
 

cuddly_tomato

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urprobablyright said:
Ask yourself is CS and 360 shooter-idjits would play a game about napoleon, with 20 second reload, single shot rifles.
I don't see why not, if it was done well. The most important aspect of a game is fun, and there is a way to make that kind of game fun.
 

Yuriatayde

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This thread is full of great ideas for FPS games... all of which that have been done before. Seriously though, if you can't see any innovation in modern FPS, you aren't looking.

Left4Dead, Team Fortress 2, Mount&Blade (first person mode + crossbow = fun), S4League, Gunz (more like ninjaz), Mirrors Edge, BioShock, and that's just off the tip of my tongue. Sure most of them aren't exactly "1st person shooters" but I lump 3rd person into the same group because the gameplay is nearly identical... just... less restrictive.

I've never once had to resort to a WW2 game to get my FPS fix. I can't stand them.
 

Snypar

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fullmetalangel said:
Gunz, enough said.

Okay, not enough said, but if you just bothered to look it up you would find out pretty fast.
Gunz is, for one thing, a third person shooter, but I personally lump third and first person shooters together.

Wait, going OT a bit here... What's a second person shooter?

Anyway, Gunz, despite its lack of graphical capability, is one of the most unique shooters I've ever layed eyes on, and it's not even new, it's just obscure. It has so much potential but no one cares about it. A graphics rehaul, and ironing out glitches and some other minor tweaks and voila, a brilliant new game.
well there isn't technically a second person perspective, but id hazard a guess that since first person is yourself, third person is a fly on the wall, second person must be the dunce sitting in the corner sucking his thumb watch you do all the work, like the marines from the Halo series...
 

NAL

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I agree with the O.P. on this subject - I'm not a fan of FPSes at the moment because they're pretty much all the same thing. The only problem is, when developers try to change them a bit, they tend to fall flat on their faces. Haze is probably the main offender here, as its failure may have cost us Timesplitters 4. I guess, in essence, most FPSes will be the same all the time (unless they truly deviate from the genre like Mirror's Edge, but that's barely an FPS becuase there's barely any shooting in it).
 

DerekWillis

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For no reason what so ever, I put my amazingly long post on page 4 into google translate. I translated it from english to arabic, arabic to russian, and russian to english and this is what I got.
( Excuse the arabic parts and read the post i was referring to on page 4. It's funny.)
Edit: that is not arabic but some sort of substitute language in place of it because this forum does not support arabic.


There is a keyboard that you MMOFPS primarily in reproduction facillity, and training to become a soldier, but you do not know that. Believes that you are living in a world where the dystopian all crazy and kill you. After an hour of game you have encountered flaw in the programming of this VR world. Investegate and I caught up to the library without door or windows. It is well known to any of the corridors. Search the shelves, but also coincided with a book on magnetic hypnotizing / mind power. After reading this passage of time, I realized the only way out is to use the power of reason. I wake up in Facillity reproduction, and should be on your to the outside world. Torward section begins when the chips implanted in the "birth" group, as compared to a warning and sends shock through your system, which temporarilly paralizes you. Robot security guards come and take you to the giant cells where you found it was not the first to find fault, and 999 other people who do not appear in both (because of genes and random transitions allels) in the cell, and all the national preparatory committees, which are similar a story for you. This number is not accidental, as in a few minutes of entering the house threw mechanical noise starts and the room and begins to decline. All against the roof of the ground Consiousness also began to disappear. At the beginning of the wall glow red hot and the profitability of this severe burns. Meeting and then slowed down by descent. Number 2 minutes for delay, to the extent that you can not determine whether it continues to move. Listen to the sound wonderfully anther. Gas begins after the defeat in that, as from anywhere and everywhere at once. Some people miss, while others died from the group of troops in autumn. You have to dominate on the brink of consiousness, and see half a wall, and people with gas masks and rifles Assult-mortem examinations. Mumbles, one of them about "the curse of the age to track longer than them. The rest of the wall is now gone and begins to approach the opposite wall. The wall will eventually be paid for all these people (and not the guards, as they happen through the exit door . You are sitting in line, and then you hear ÝíåÇ ÇáÅÍÕÇÁÇÊ, ãä 1000 æÇáÊí ÈÏÃÊ ÝÞØ äÌæÇ ãä 826, Èíäåã ÔÎÕ ÚäÏãÇ ßäÊ ÇÌÊãÚ áÃæá ãÑÉ ÏÎá ÇáÛÑÝÉ æåÐÇ áä íÊã ÓáÝÇ æáßä ãä ÇáäÇÓ áß æÇÎÊÇÑÊ áÇÌÑÇÁ ãÍÇÏËÇÊ ãÚ æÇÍÏ ãäåã ÓíãæÊ æåæ ãÇ sergent ãäÇÍí ÇáÊÏÑíÈÇÊ ÇáãÇÖíÉ ßäÊ áÏíß ÎíÇÑÇÊ ãÊÚÏÏÉ ãÇ íãßäß ÇáÞíÇã Èå, each card face and one of the buttons or the removal of the left lead to stop the game in the "Decision Time" to know everything that might happen since Do.what is that how to play, if you sergent pet will be considered as a good soldier, if he decides, Ãä ÊÍÕá Úáíå ãä ÌÍíã åÐÇ ÇáãÌãÚ ÇáÍÞ Ýí Ðáß ÇáÍíä, æåäÇß æÞÊ ÃÝÖá áß Úãáß áÃä åÐÇ ÇáÍÞ åæ ãäÔÃÉ ÚÓßÑíÉ. íãßäß ÞÏ íÞÊá ÞÈá Çä ÊÞæá ßáãÉ " äÚã íÇ ÓíÏí. "ÅÐÇ ÞÑÑÊ ÇáãÔÇÑßÉ Ýí ÇáÊÏÑíÈ, æÈãÑæÑ ÇáæÞÊ, áÏíß ÈÚÖ ÇáÊÏÑíÈÇÊ ÝíåÇ you get this to determine what will be the next event to go, for example, you try sabotauge commander, and await the next stage to begin with you to get beaten by a bloody pulp. Of course, You can try to avoid any time you want it just to play in the depth of something special, and perhaps if I went all the way until the end of history, where the line in random Corperation once again trying to leave would lead to serious consequenses. But if you do this with the outside world, find it much worse than the reality in the virtual world so far have not been able to die only for the very blood. Do you want to, of course, in an attempt to not die, that once you goodbye dystopian peace in any case, you'll find a platoon of persons whose names appear in random order. In connection with the instability in the city and human curiosity, you will certainly be one person was killed in connection with some / friendly / and one of the greatest staff team, by the way, this family does not take kindly to surprise and considerable control over the city, and turning one out of every five people against you. You will get an opportunity with the leader to flee if the city was self-defense, and witnesses saw, but whether alone or fired / turned Givin any will be the first warning. "At the end of the day, when he dies, such as: murder, accident, illness or aging, the screen slowly fades to black and yellow for your character, as he is in danger Cushining on the wall two inches in fron from the nose. the main menu, as in the past, you have to press start and load another save. You can slip back into your coma and: to continue in life and return to reproduce facillity, to return to military life, or you can try your luck in the outside world, and trying to escape. If you run it turns into a MMOFPS, I not only immediately FPS drop in the third world war, and that is why you know that every state for itself, and you will randomly spawn in one of countries, even if you do not want to be in this army, you better pick up the next flight out, and everything is done in the face of it, and even the means of public transport, travel times are based on estimates Download time in this area, then you have ever project into the ground (or ordinary accident, as it is a good way of tax evasion, but the vest and your pilot project). and, of course, you can without your permission, to join the "Antarticans", a group of activists who do not actually live in crude Antartica. And finally, the war that took place during the research, inadvertently, a high post in the recent League of Nations. (and not in the League of Nations proposed by Woodrow Wilson, but the type of the United Nations.)
 

Baneat

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Games with muzzle loading rifles would suck horribly. Not enough shooting. I'm surprised a CoD isn't set in Vietnam though.
 

Grounogeos

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Hunde Des Krieg said:
cuddly_tomato said:
Ok, we have the grizzled space marine with a gun that looks like a piece of construction equipment or the WW2 tough guy with a chin you could crack anvils on.

Anyone else?

Why in the name of Michael Bay are there no other genres of FPS games? I am loathe to speak for anyone except myself but am I really the only one who is getting a bit fed up with this? It's not even as if it would be difficult to come up with some alternatives... here:-

Napoleonic wars (a la Sharpe), with muskets and flintlocks.

WW1, up over the trench with 30 buddies, all trying to get to the machine gun nest without getting perforated by enemy bullets.

Pirates, specifically the boarding parts. Running around Friggates and stuff with those awful little pistol things, complete with explodable environments from all the cannon fire.

Being in a SWAT team, having to raid random buildings in a city to rescue hostages and stuff. Even driving your SWAT van there and ordering your squad about. (kinda like GTA but with an FPS SWAT motif).

If they had a go at any of these I guarantee they would generate more interest (and sales) than Medal of Honor:1032 or Call of Duty 17. Is there a valid reason game developers haven't tried something new?
The napoleonic wars one would be very very boring, Different but boring, although maybe if they turned the reloading into a mini game type thing(but that era really lends itself to more of a RTS game). WWI could work. I like the pirates idea, If you could use swords and daggers. The SWAT one kind of sounds like rainbow six though, Maybe if you ramp up the raid planning capabilities.
Samus from the Metroid series is a FEMALE (yeah, how many female protaganists are there? Samus is the queen of them all...although that isn't really saying much, given her competition....) Bounty Hunter whose gun is built into her armor, and she was trained to be a 1-woman army by the (now-extinct) most powerful race in the universe.
How's that for originality?

Although I do kinda see your point. The problem is that one or two good games come out, and everyone decides to either copy/paste one of those ideas or make a variation of it. (I swear, if another fucking WWII game gets made, people are going to start fucking dying, and I don't mean the Japanese/German soldiers in the WWII game. The WWII's been overused for, like, over 5 years; can we PLEASE get a game for a different war?!)
Maybe they should make a pre-guns FPS, where they use shit like bows or blowpipes (Warhammer Lizardmen!!!)
 

Hunde Des Krieg

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Grounogeos said:
Hunde Des Krieg said:
cuddly_tomato said:
Ok, we have the grizzled space marine with a gun that looks like a piece of construction equipment or the WW2 tough guy with a chin you could crack anvils on.

Anyone else?

Why in the name of Michael Bay are there no other genres of FPS games? I am loathe to speak for anyone except myself but am I really the only one who is getting a bit fed up with this? It's not even as if it would be difficult to come up with some alternatives... here:-

Napoleonic wars (a la Sharpe), with muskets and flintlocks.

WW1, up over the trench with 30 buddies, all trying to get to the machine gun nest without getting perforated by enemy bullets.

Pirates, specifically the boarding parts. Running around Friggates and stuff with those awful little pistol things, complete with explodable environments from all the cannon fire.

Being in a SWAT team, having to raid random buildings in a city to rescue hostages and stuff. Even driving your SWAT van there and ordering your squad about. (kinda like GTA but with an FPS SWAT motif).

If they had a go at any of these I guarantee they would generate more interest (and sales) than Medal of Honor:1032 or Call of Duty 17. Is there a valid reason game developers haven't tried something new?
The napoleonic wars one would be very very boring, Different but boring, although maybe if they turned the reloading into a mini game type thing(but that era really lends itself to more of a RTS game). WWI could work. I like the pirates idea, If you could use swords and daggers. The SWAT one kind of sounds like rainbow six though, Maybe if you ramp up the raid planning capabilities.
Samus from the Metroid series is a FEMALE (yeah, how many female protaganists are there? Samus is the queen of them all...although that isn't really saying much, given her competition....) Bounty Hunter whose gun is built into her armor, and she was trained to be a 1-woman army by the (now-extinct) most powerful race in the universe.
How's that for originality?
Uh thanks... I already knew that, and three games about her (in first person) already came out, and I've played the first two. Are you sure you meant to quote me?
 

Grounogeos

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Hunde Des Krieg said:
Uh thanks... I already knew that, and three games about her (in first person) already came out, and I've played the first two. Are you sure you meant to quote me?
Sorry about that, I hit Quote on your comment by mistake; I meant to quote the OP.