Poll: Police in games

[The Unworthy Gentleman]

NOTE: A search was done. I sifted through a few pages of results for a thread like this but came up with nothing. If there was a thread like this a few days, weeks or months ago I apologise.

It's become apparent that police systems in games are terrible. The problems differ between each game and while none of them are game breaking, they do make you step back for a moment as you wonder why you were arrested for tapping that police car when the didn't care about you shooting a guy 5 metres away. It's a difficult area for developers to get right, the perfect balance between realism and fun, but when it's done wrong it can break some of the immersion.

Just as a few examples of bad policing systems we have

[li]Oblivion's issue with stealing something and suddenly you have 15 town guards after you, not to mention a bunch of floating items.[/li]
[li]GTA 4's strange circle that you have to get out of to evade the police, while it didn't work in the world of GTA it worked beautifully in RDR where long range communication is limited and you have to rely on the few people in each town that will chase a guy down.[/li]
[li]Mafia 2's rather odd 'no speeding or tapping other cars but feel free to run every red light' rule.[/li]

What games do you know have good and bad police systems and how can we improve on the bad ones? Do you even think that police systems need improved on or are you content with the way they are now?

 

[PayneTrayne]

I was a fan of Vice City's system, getting the stars was always well deserved BUT getting rid of them was far too hard.

RDR, as you said, also has a great system.

 

[The Unworthy Gentleman]

I was a fan of Vice City's system, getting the stars was always well deserved BUT getting rid of them was far too hard.

RDR, as you said, also has a great system.

I wouldn't say they were too hard to get rid of, I usually enjoyed a chase around the city to get to a pay n' spray. I loved the spike traps as well, they were a nice addition to the previous games and added a little extra challenge. The issue I'd draw with Vice City was that you had to shoot a good few people before you had one star and stealing a car was never something that was looked into.

 

[emeraldrafael]

The police in games are just like they are in real life (at least where I live). They keep you down and impose their twisted form of paid off justice while you're weak enough to, but once you get the power, they're little more then a joke.

 

[bigredlyms]

not technically police, obviously, but in AC1, the guards made absolutely no sense whatsoever. They were the most suspicious pricks alive for you but other people could bump into them, run past them, and do pretty much anything and they would never get stabbed in return. I always thought that sending out a decoy would be a good thing to include in that game. In AC2 and brotherhood, they did exactly what i was thinking they should do by including the thieves to be used as decoys to be chased, and the guards werent ridiculously suspicious of only you. My only complaint with them was that i thought it was very strange that rooftop guards were the only ones that got mad at you for being on roofs. Guards on the ground can blatantly see you on rooftops and they just dont give a shit. also, in games like crackdown, i really dislike how you can use an explosive to take down 5 gang cars at once but if ever a door from that explosion goes and hits a civilian or a cop car, you are now more wanted than all the gangs combined.

So, OT: a lot of work is needed

 

[Valkyrie101]

They should probably be less inclined to shoot to kill. I mean, in GTA IV, they'd start shooting if you ran a red light and then evaded them for a couple of minutes.

 

[T8B95]

not technically police, obviously, but in AC1, the guards made absolutely no sense whatsoever. They were the most suspicious pricks alive for you but other people could bump into them, run past them, and do pretty much anything and they would never get stabbed in return. I always thought that sending out a decoy would be a good thing to include in that game. In AC2 and brotherhood, they did exactly what i was thinking they should do by including the thieves to be used as decoys to be chased, and the guards werent ridiculously suspicious of only you. My only complaint with them was that i thought it was very strange that rooftop guards were the only ones that got mad at you for being on roofs. Guards on the ground can blatantly see you on rooftops and they just dont give a shit.

It's not so much the fact that you're breaking the law, it's that you're a wanted Assassin walking around with an entire armoury on your back. I'm just surprised that as soon as they see you they don't start flipping shit--you actually have to do something first.

 

[oplinger]

A lot of times it seems to be a compromise between realism and fun. Like in GTA4, getting out of the circle is nice, consider driving in that game when you can't evade the police >.> Driving in general is annoying in that game. That and the overall lack of pay and sprays would make getting wanted game breakingly annoying, because you'd have to drive halfway across the city, get sprayed, find your objective....go to the other side of the city, get sprayed, finish your objective, all the while getting shot at, rammed into, getting your tires blown out, and cartwheeling down the freeway because you turned too hard, launching yourself off an overpass into a flight of stairs where you continue rolling until you slam into a wall, on fire. and explode before you can get away.

...I don't have a problem with GTA4 >> ..not at all. ..that's actually happened to me btw..

For mafia 2, having to stop at red lights would just be annoying too, the game just wouldn't be much fun at all as most of your time would be waiting for lights to change.

So..cops may be intentionally ridiculous. I don't think any real representation of cops would work in a game anyway.

 

[The Unworthy Gentleman]

[snip

it's not hard because it needs to strike the cord between realism and fun,
it's hard because of how police work. how is a game supposed to know when you're punching your fist on a car on accident, or purposefully? a game can't judge your motivations, so it can't determine whether it should send police after you or not.
also know that the line of sight of a policeman is first person, while that of the player may be third: you can look around corners, but they cannot see you or what you are doing.

now imagine a huge complex system where it can judge your motivations perfectly depending on loads of parameters. will your computer be able to perfectly simulate something people have to go to university for?

Easily. Punching a car, on purpose or by accident, is a crime if you damage it. So if you go right ahead and do something like that then the developers can use a witness system, where a passer-by or the owner runs to the police or calls them telling them of your crime. These systems have been done before, Red Dead is a good example of it as is AC:B, and it merely creates a logical reason behind the law coming after you rather than merely a hive mind AI. What really needs to be worked out isn't the motivation behind a crime, it's defining what crimes should be classed as crimes and which should be left out. Accidentally hitting a car gently should not be classed as a hit and run, even when you stop. Mafia 2 had some good speed and weapon laws, but it has horrific driving rules.

 

[The Night Shade]

I liked the Mafia 2 sistem but i think they need a little bit of work,for now let's say that is ok

 

[Daveeo]

Mafia 1 is the game with the most realistic police system i have played yet. And even that could use some love.

 

[binvjoh]

They could use some work but I certainly wouldn't call them terrible.

 

[The Unworthy Gentleman]

So..cops may be intentionally ridiculous. I don't think any real representation of cops would work in a game anyway.

That's it though, is the line drawn at the right place? Should I have to stop at a red light when the police are around? When I run a red light in the next GTA would it be a good idea to have police going around looking for your car to give you a fine? As said earlier, you could either stop and go to the police station or die and go to the hospital in GTA 4. In Mafia 2 you could go to jail, be fined or get killed. That little in between that adds to the realism to the game, not wanting to be fined for a minor crime but also wanting to have fun. It was balanced nicely in Mafia 2, but I always had a small part of my mind telling me that I should be getting punished for running a red light in front of a police officer.

 

[DeadlyYellow]

My only complaint with them was that i thought it was very strange that rooftop guards were the only ones that got mad at you for being on roofs. Guards on the ground can blatantly see you on rooftops and they just dont give a shit.

Pfft. That's obviously because the Rooftop guards were the only ones that could see the wanted posters.

 

[oplinger]

So..cops may be intentionally ridiculous. I don't think any real representation of cops would work in a game anyway.

That's it though, is the line drawn at the right place? Should I have to stop at a red light when the police are around? When I run a red light in the next GTA would it be a good idea to have police going around looking for your car to give you a fine? As said earlier, you could either stop and go to the police station or die and go to the hospital in GTA 4. In Mafia 2 you could go to jail, be fined or get killed. That little in between that adds to the realism to the game, not wanting to be fined for a minor crime but also wanting to have fun. It was balanced nicely in Mafia 2, but I always had a small part of my mind telling me that I should be getting punished for running a red light in front of a police officer.

I'd say it's drawn well enough. GTA kind of has an emphasis on getting away with crime. So the cops are pretty lax. Mafia puts more emphasis on not getting caught, but takes out some things for the sake of fun.

It's not perfect, but it's passable. Perhaps someone should make a small demo of a game with realistic crime go go AI programmers!

 

[Stammer]

Y'know, for games like Grand Theft Auto where police are an integral part of the game I think they really need to work on it. I mean, we're not talking about an afterthought part of the game, we're talking something that massively affects the quality of the game.

So for a number of games that don't really need it, whatever. But for games like GTA, it needs to be worked on a lot more. It needs to be more realistic.

 

[Guthixflare7]

Saint's Row 2. The cops aren't the worst but they could use some intelligence, I was in a huge gang battle and some cop rams me almost killing me and killing him so then I get 2 stars for killing a cop of whom ran into me.My complaint is why do I pay for the cops being idiots?

 

[baddude1337]

I thought GTA4 had a much better police system than most other games. You weren't just wanted instantly, someone actually got their phone out to call the police and they wouldn't instantly go and shoot you unless you were playing multiplayer, and it was cool they would sometimes take control of someone else's car to chase you down, but it could still use some work.

I think the trouble with creating good police AI is I bet it is hard as fuck to code laws into their behavior anyway, more so if you wanted the AI to distinguish between accidental and deliberate, that's pretty much impossible.

Besides, do you really want realistic cops? Running a few red lights and going really fast would get a whole squad of cars after you, laying spike trips, closing and blocking roads and laying spike traps as well as a police helicopter making it pretty much impossible to escape.