bombadilillo said:
1. Health. Vs Regen. I really hate regen. No matter what game it is all strategy goes out the window and becomes POP UP take out 1 or more baddies while taking damage POP DOWN and wait, repeat. Health makes you accountable for your actions, tense, and makes you think. I am all for hybrid systems. Have a shield that protects a few shots with a nonregen health below. Or health regens to a certain level so your never near zero. Awesome, go for it, but regen still turns all game play into a boring popup cover shooter.
Sixcess put it best, having to search for a health-pack every time you get shot would break up the combat too much. So having regenerative health is a design-choice, not preference.
2. Length, games are too freaking short. I look forward to the day when COD does not have a single player campaign. When they finally drop the pretext and token effort and just make a multiplayer game, put in some bots and challenges for singleplayers if you must. This worked with unreal tournament 10 years ago, its a viable strategy. I personally like single player campaigns more and would LOVE a distinct split. Make multi only games and single only games and put your effort into that. I want a 20 hour campaign. Keep the 5 hour crap. If it was 20 hours with replay value and multiple play style options I might just buy it instead of gamefly.
Wait, you love Half-life (the series or just the first one?), a pretty short game (depends on the difficulty really), but hate short games like CoD? wat wat wat.
3. Story, Im going to skirt tenuously close to the Half life debate here so bear with me. Spoiler alert as well. In half life near the start you have spent hours trying to get to the surface. The scientists have been talking about rumors of the military coming to rescue you all in your fight against mysterious aliens. You enter a room on a catwalk and see 2 soldiers! You are saved! A scientist yells ?Thank God youre here!? and the soldiers brutally gun him down. Thats it. You can surmise that its cover up time and your about to be covered up. Theres no cut scene spelling it out in detail the decisions back in Washington, you know what your character knows, nothing more. Later in the game black ops assassins show up and start taking out the soldiers! Height of irony, now their being covered up too. How much worse have things gotten? Someone high up is freaking out to the point that they dont trust the regular military! Compare this to a recent story telling event in COD:BO. I torture a person violently till they give me some bullet points for the plot, hand them a gun and their on my side now, the guy I just tortured, WTF. WTF, well glad hes not made about the whole insane pain thing. Now its not always necessary to keep just your characters perspective, and knowing plot beyond them can be good, but the modern fps isnt really doing a great job here
Can't fault you there, stories in FPS are generally not the focus, as gameplay, (and most of the time) graphics come first. Also, some games do not need a story (Doom), but games like Homefront (that place a lot of importance on story) need to deliver, no doubt.
4. Smart AI. A lot of review laud the smart AI in fpss like ?they use grenades to flush you out, they flank you?. I think this is a growing symptom of the health regen reducing things to cover/popup shooters. Smart AI really means, you have to switch cover occasionally or theyll get you. 12+ years ago there were smart enemies, they never stayed in the same cover, they flanked you, if you stay in same place they grenade launch your ass. On that point, they like you had grenade launchers on their rifles AND THEY USED THEM. This is all probably a problem with the idea of smart AI. We want challenging enemies not smart. Imagine a game with you vs 100+ actual players coordinating with each other in a single player setting. You would stand no chance at all and it wouldnt be fun.
The thing is, in realistic shooters (such as CoD, Battlefield, etc.), having the enemy run out guns blazing is not a viable tactic, as they are no longer superhuman (as was the case with older shooters). Meaning, that they need to use covers, as they are made out of flesh and bones. Also, there is a difference between scripted AI and smart AI. The former is where the gameplay is usually limited to a small number of ways you can approach the situation, meaning that the programmers can make the enemy do stuff like flank you, because the enemy does not have to deal with dynamic situations. The latter however, means that the enemy has to be able to deal with ever-changing situations and a multitude of approaches. It might not be as cinematic as scripted AI, but it gives the player more freedom in gameplay.
5. Carrying 2 weapons. So you can carry only 2 pistols, but you can carry a m60 with ammo and a rocket launcher. I call shenanigans. Especially when my character model has a FREAKING PISTOL HOLSTER ON IT. At least have pistol +2 others?.This is a weird contention point because I know its silly to carry 12 different guns. Grid based and weight based are good systems but take away from the fps experience with the management factor. I kinda like the one of each style, one long gun one rocket/special one pistol one smg sized. I dont know what I like best here, but its defiantly not 2 guns PERIOD. I wanna save my shotty for when I need it dammit. Having different guns for different situations is fun. A lot of 2 gun games know this and but areas with a bunch of guns before big fights so you can choose. Why not just let me take more then game?
But being able to have one weapon of each type removes strategic elements to the game. F.x. in Half-life 2 (or just games where you can carry loads of guns) all encounters went like this: See Enemy -> Pull out necessary gun. In CoD it goes something like this: See Enemy -> Do i have the necessary gun? if yes, shoot. If no, get closer or draw your enemy near you.
This adds a strategic element to which load-out you choose to have and how you approach (short-range, mid-range or long-range) the enemy, instead of being able to deal with the situation no matter what.
6. Varied gameplay. Fighting of zombies for a few hours with limited ammo and a crowbar, fighting soldiers and aliens, fighting just aliens in another dimension, occasional puzzle, pseudo stealth section, exploration, platforming. Dont get me wrong I like the token stealth level in COD, though its getting more ?follow some dude while he talks? unchallenging with each game. Otherwise shooters are just firefight, walk firefight. There has to be something fun to do between fights that developers can think of.
But the thing is, puzzle sections and such are just a matter of taste (and i think the gameplay you were describing is more like: Fighting section, puzzle section, stealth section and platforming section), developers have been trying to insert more variety in each game (in BLOPS there was stealth, vehicle sections, flying sections and tactical sections). So developers are getting the point.
you will see.
