Modern trends in FPS I do not care for

[Wargamer]

I want to make it clear I'm not trying to tear your post apart here; I'm merely offering alternative viewpoints.

Problems with the FPS genre
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.

Extra Credits pointed out quite nicely that the two mechanics cause very different styles of play. For example, Health Regen allows for 'turtling' in Cover; as long as you are always able to duck out of line of fire, you can hold your ground indefinitely. By contrast, Health based combat allows you to hold ground only up until the next enemy hit will kill you. At that point, you are forced to find a medipack.

Personally, my favourite application of both styles is Resistance: Fall of Man. Your health bar was split into four sub-bars, and that was the limit you would regen to. For example, if an enemy attack took you down to 76% health, you would regen to 100%. If you went down to 75% or less, however, you would only regen back to 75%. This occured for 50% and 25% health as well, meaning that you could afford to duck and hide, but if you make a mistake and get yourself torn up, you'll only have the bare minimum health available until you locate a health up.

I may touch on a few more later.

 

[bombadilillo]

I want to make it clear I'm not trying to tear your post apart here; I'm merely offering alternative viewpoints.

Problems with the FPS genre
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.

Extra Credits pointed out quite nicely that the two mechanics cause very different styles of play. For example, Health Regen allows for 'turtling' in Cover; as long as you are always able to duck out of line of fire, you can hold your ground indefinitely. By contrast, Health based combat allows you to hold ground only up until the next enemy hit will kill you. At that point, you are forced to find a medipack.

Personally, my favourite application of both styles is Resistance: Fall of Man. Your health bar was split into four sub-bars, and that was the limit you would regen to. For example, if an enemy attack took you down to 76% health, you would regen to 100%. If you went down to 75% or less, however, you would only regen back to 75%. This occured for 50% and 25% health as well, meaning that you could afford to duck and hide, but if you make a mistake and get yourself torn up, you'll only have the bare minimum health available until you locate a health up.

I may touch on a few more later.

I really liked Resistances system. Same thing in Far Cry 2. I'd call those a hybrid system. Anway I agree there are advantages to regen health, like balancing every fight knowing player has X health. But it just make actions so inconsequential. I could take theoreticly infinate bullets to the chest in COD. Thats just wrong. Someone else posted that when i makes story sense it seems less bad, shields bionic man, etc. I just know personally regen health makes me cover shoot cover shoot and never bother to rethink my strategy.

 

[ryai458]

Shooters involve firefights which including shooting? Who knew.

 

[bombadilillo]

5) Limiting you to 2 weapons forces you to make important tactical decisions... when there is actually a noticeable difference between weapons. In your archetypal wartime FPS, there aren't enough weapons or varieties of enemy for it to have a noticeable effect. Halo popularised the trend, and it had clearly defined roles for each weapon, and enough enemy variety for it to make a difference (e.g you'd be much better off taking a Needler than an Assault Rifle to take care of those Elites, but vice versa for Grunts). Modern war FPS games suffer - you fight the same kind of enemy every time, pretty much, just with a reskin (by necessity; there's only 1 species of human). There are also usually only 5-6 weapons: assault rifle, SMG, pistol, shotgun, sniper rifle, RPG. Yes, there are different varieties of all, but they are all functionally very similar. I think games like this would benefit from giving you a larger inventory, considering there are few tactical decisions to be made anyway. (Incidentally, I liked the way BC1 did it - things like the rocket launcher, C4, artillery designator etc. were assigned to a different inventory, and the levels were very open and allowed you a lot of choice in how you approached the enemy. Also, weirdly, the Assault Rifle had a grenade launcher attachment you could switch to, basically meaning that 1 gun counted as 2 and took up your whole inventory... still a great game.)

I see the idea, and choice you give the player. But don't you get the same effect by ammo placement?
If I have a shotgun but no ammo exist for it on this level, I as the player have to manage my use cause when its gone its gone. I think thats just as deep if not deeper level of choice the player is faced with. 2 gun becomes, use what the enemies at the time are using. 2 guns only is not a neccessary premise for "choice" in that reguard. Killzor 3 had ammo crates that refilled everything so you could take your fav guns everywhere but restricted other choices. I can have a rifle and rocket launcher but not rifle and shotgun? wierd.

 

[BahamutWings]

my favourite health system ever was Resistance - Fall of Man. you got your 4 chunks, every chunk would regenerate to its max, but if you lost the whole chunk, you couldn't regenerate it again until you found a health pack. A pretty intuitive system, with the chunks almost being "risks" you coudl take in a tactical manouvre.

As for weapon carrying, i tihnk Killzone 3 got it spot on. one Assault weapon (rifle, shotgun, smg, sniper), one special (rocket launcher, grenade launcher, minigun) and one pistol (revolver, pistol, shotgun pistol). Its a realistic amount to be able to carry.

As for my own complaints, i think the death of one console multiplayer was tragic. I loved afternoons of TimeSplitters 2 with 3 mates, fragging the heck outta bots.

Ah well eh!

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

I've just played the Bulletstorm demo.

Can I just say, "everything in that demo"?

I'd rather eat my own vomit.

 

[repeating integers]

5) Limiting you to 2 weapons forces you to make important tactical decisions... when there is actually a noticeable difference between weapons. In your archetypal wartime FPS, there aren't enough weapons or varieties of enemy for it to have a noticeable effect. Halo popularised the trend, and it had clearly defined roles for each weapon, and enough enemy variety for it to make a difference (e.g you'd be much better off taking a Needler than an Assault Rifle to take care of those Elites, but vice versa for Grunts). Modern war FPS games suffer - you fight the same kind of enemy every time, pretty much, just with a reskin (by necessity; there's only 1 species of human). There are also usually only 5-6 weapons: assault rifle, SMG, pistol, shotgun, sniper rifle, RPG. Yes, there are different varieties of all, but they are all functionally very similar. I think games like this would benefit from giving you a larger inventory, considering there are few tactical decisions to be made anyway. (Incidentally, I liked the way BC1 did it - things like the rocket launcher, C4, artillery designator etc. were assigned to a different inventory, and the levels were very open and allowed you a lot of choice in how you approached the enemy. Also, weirdly, the Assault Rifle had a grenade launcher attachment you could switch to, basically meaning that 1 gun counted as 2 and took up your whole inventory... still a great game.)

I see the idea, and choice you give the player. But don't you get the same effect by ammo placement?
If I have a shotgun but no ammo exist for it on this level, I as the player have to manage my use cause when its gone its gone. I think thats just as deep if not deeper level of choice the player is faced with. 2 gun becomes, use what the enemies at the time are using. 2 guns only is not a neccessary premise for "choice" in that reguard. Killzor 3 had ammo crates that refilled everything so you could take your fav guns everywhere but restricted other choices. I can have a rifle and rocket launcher but not rifle and shotgun? wierd.

2 guns may not be a necessary premise for choice, but I think it's the best method. Let's run with this whole "shotgun" thing. If you have a 2-weapon limit, and have the player (a male, for our purposes) start the level with a Shotgun and another weapon (I dunno, a pistol). This will dictate his tactical choices, as unless the pistol is the kind of uber god-weapon found in Halo CE, he'll have one tactic open to him - to get in close with the shotgun to deal with enemies - unless he swaps out his pistol for another weapon, perhaps a more long-ranged one, in which case he will have two tactics available to him. Now obviously it's rarely that simple (I haven't factored in grenades or melee, which both present viable tactical options), but in the case of infinite-inventory systems, it's different. Level design permitting, the player always has all the weapons' tactical options available, and even if the shotgun is deprived of ammo on that level, it still means all but one of the tactical options are open, rather than a few at a time. Now I'm not saying one is better than the other - that is an issue on which opinions vary wildly. Some people like constantly having all options available to them, some like being forced to choose and run with their choice. But the difference is definitely there.

 

[Nuds1000]

I know this example doesn't work perfectly but in terms of health I thought the MechWarrior games got it right. Your heath was determined by how much damage had been done to different components of your mech, If your leg got too damaged your mech would limp, if your arm got blown off you lost all the weapons and equipment on that arm. It was very realistic with out being annoying and making you reload the level 20 times. This sort of system allowed the player manage how they took damage, for instance if you where in a heavy fire fight and someone fired missiles at you, a simple twist of you mech would distribute the damage across the whole body of your mech instead of one concentrated area. this also meant that you didn't always have to aim for the head when fighting other mechs you could instead remove their weapon and move on.

we see systems like this in rpg fps games like the new fallouts but I feel like it wouldn't be that hard to do it in regular fps.

on a side note my major complaint is wtf happened to stealth? the only part I liked of CoD 4 was the stealth sniper mission. I hate that lots of fps games don't give me the option of not killing an enemy and I feel better sometimes if I can sneak through a room to the best spot then start picking off enemies in my own time.

 

[bombadilillo]

Snip

Like I said I see your point and it makes sense. But practicly there are some problems. You need a basic rifle all around gun then you pick a secondary choice, shotgun, rocket, sniper. If I have to choose between a shotgun and sniper rifle and I pick say sniper, then I turn a corner and uh-oh sewer level. I can backtrack (depending on game) and get the shotgun or get screwed with bad equipment choices for the rest of the level. Developers often guard against this by conviniently placing a shotgun at the sewer entrance. Thats all fine and dandy but as a gamer I have learned this lesson. If I see a rocket launcher lying there chances are high theres a truck/boss/helo I need it to kill so my choice is actually just illusion. If you get a sniper rifle option chances are good you will need it soon.

Some games get the balance right and are fine with 2 guns. Resistance 2 was crap and just tried to jump on the Halo bandwagon with the problems I decribe above. HL2 had reletivly small amounts of ammo for each gun which is a good compromise I think.

Like I said a weight based or grid based system would work well for how much you can carry. But that goes against FPS style. I just think Master Cheif can carry a pistol a needler and another gun, hes a big strong dude.

 

[Veldt Falsetto]

Go play the Metroid Prime Trilogy you will see.

 

[bombadilillo]

Go play the Metroid Prime Trilogy you will see.

See what? I've played them all and loved them. 2 pissed me off when it told me to go find keys, but other then that I haven't a bad thing to say about them.

 

[repeating integers]

Snip

Like I said I see your point and it makes sense. But practicly there are some problems. You need a basic rifle all around gun then you pick a secondary choice, shotgun, rocket, sniper. If I have to choose between a shotgun and sniper rifle and I pick say sniper, then I turn a corner and uh-oh sewer level. I can backtrack (depending on game) and get the shotgun or get screwed with bad equipment choices for the rest of the level. Developers often guard against this by conviniently placing a shotgun at the sewer entrance. Thats all fine and dandy but as a gamer I have learned this lesson. If I see a rocket launcher lying there chances are high theres a truck/boss/helo I need it to kill so my choice is actually just illusion. If you get a sniper rifle option chances are good you will need it soon.

Some games get the balance right and are fine with 2 guns. Resistance 2 was crap and just tried to jump on the Halo bandwagon with the problems I decribe above. HL2 had reletivly small amounts of ammo for each gun which is a good compromise I think.

Like I said a weight based or grid based system would work well for how much you can carry. But that goes against FPS style. I just think Master Cheif can carry a pistol a needler and another gun, hes a big strong dude.

Yeah, for the 2-weapon limit to really work, you need to build up your levels around it to make sure the principle actually works. An example I like is from (of course) the game that popularised the system, Halo CE. The Truth and Reconciliation mission gives you a sniper rifle, and the most obvious way to play it is as a sniping mission - which can easily be done, and you can take out the infantry and turret operators from a distance on your lofty ledge. But you're also given an assault rifle and grenades - if you want, you can jump right down and play it as a normal mission, and it works fine like this. Throughout the mission (including when you're on board the spaceship Truth and Reconciliation), the game gives you opporunities to play it either as a sniper mission or a normal mission - or, as I did it, a combination of both.

And HL2's compromise strategy really comes to light in Ravenholm... damn but ammo is so scarce in that creepy, creepy place. It only adds to the paranoia.

 

[Veldt Falsetto]

Go play the Metroid Prime Trilogy you will see.

See what? I've played them all and loved them. 2 pissed me off when it told me to go find keys, but other then that I haven't a bad thing to say about them.

Mostly that there is still somewhat hope for the FPS genre I'm mostly just saying that I agree with you completely and that there are other games out there with the same strong points as Half-Life

...just not many unfortunately

 

[bombadilillo]

Good point on Ravenholm. It didnt take your weapons away but strongly encouraged you to use the gg.

Having all the guns makes me always feel like Truth and Reconciliation, If I have saved my bullets and want to snip then I can. Honestly though I ran through Halo with the pistol if it was at all an option.

 

[BreakfastMan]

1. Health. Vs Regen.

Question: Why does it have to be an "either or" thing? why can't we have a combination of the two and satisfy everyone? It has been done before in other games you know and there are many, many different ways to do it.

 

[Alphakirby]

Let's see what I hate in an FPS...
1.BROWN! BROWN EVERYWHERE!
2.XP Systems in Multiplayer
3.Trying to copy Halo
4.Trying to copy the original Call of Duties
5.Gritty! Gritty Everywhere!
Seriously,this list could go on forever if I let it.

 

[Zantos]

1) I'll start taking the health vs. regen argument more seriously when I play a health based shooter when I play a health based where you don't trip over medkits as if you're the only person that has any use for them. Halo Reach gains a pat on the head for trying with it's unholy regen/healthbar hybrid.

2) I wouldn't want the sort of several hundred hour game that people can get out of recent RPGs, but I agree with you on longer campaigns. People would argue that most of the play time comes from the multiplayer but screw that I want a decent story mode.

3) I don't think Half Life is good example of great story telling. Cutscenes are not the enemy, a well scripted and well placed cutscene can do wonders for the story. I'll mention Halo again because a lot of the time in Halo a cutscene will give you all the information you needed to know in a short burst plus the interaction with the other characters tends to tell you about the motivations behind the actions. Most of the motivations by my actions in a recent playthrough of half life 2 were because someone told me to with no option to even ask why or for him to repeat something I didn't quite catch. Good thing it was so linear otherwise a background explosion during someone talking to me and I'd have had no clue where to go.

4) Smart AI is something I one day hope to see, everyone in most of the games I play is completely moronic. Maybe in some pact to make the fights fair all the people likely to get into a fight had their brain removed.

5) Depends on the game. Weight based systems where the maximum weight you can carry is about the same as the moon can be fun. See fallout 3 for "Which of the 14 weapons shall I use this time? How about the one with the nuke!" At other times two weapons is good, making you have to think about the tactical benefits of each combination of weapons for each scenario. Naturally however everyone just chooses an assault rifle and either a shotgun or sniper but, hey, they're good combinations! Also Gears of war and mass effect weapon carrying systems worked fairly well, I see no reason why that couldn't be applied to our first person perspective.

6) The clue is in the word "shooter". There's very little you can do with that other than shoot at things or move to the next place to shoot at things. Still, we can dream that one day these will be incorporated, not before the line of generic RPGs and Dragon Age clones though.