Strategy in non-Squad/Realism Shooters

[sXeth]

This clip rambled into my Youtube feed, and it's actually one of the best summaries of the lost strategy of the "old school" FPS that went down the tube with loadouts and health regens.

(about 3 minutes in when they stop discussing Starcraft and switch to Quake)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_mo-aV60xA

Which actually got me wondering if there's any of that style of multiplayer FPS still kicking around. Doom16 can do it in the snapmap mode, but that's kind of a ghost town. Quake still exists, though much reduced. Unreal Tournament (4?) seems to have locked into eternal alpha and most of the team got siphoned to making Fortnite's Battle Royale.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

What lost strategy? Instead of camping/controlling the rocket launcher spawn point, you camp/control key map points in other shooters. It's the same basic strategy of controlling the most important map area. You also need the same opponent anticipation skills as well regardless of shooter. Movement abilities and skills sorta vanished during the MMS trend but they have come back pretty strong recently. Hero-based MOBA inspired shooters contain both elements of needing overall map control for objective purposes and controlling specific areas for resources as well along with most having characters with tons of movement abilities.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

The lost art of the rocket jump.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

You're talking about arena shooters. The thing is though, until we see something as good as UT99 again, we're not gonna see a resurgence in this genre.

 

[COMaestro]

Yeah, I would not consider Quake or Doom a "strategic shooter". The various Tom Clancy Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon games seem more appropriate for that description.

 

[Worgen]

You're talking about arena shooters. The thing is though, until we see something as good as UT99 again, we're not gonna see a resurgence in this genre.

They already made UT 2004 and it was awesome.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

You're talking about arena shooters. The thing is though, until we see something as good as UT99 again, we're not gonna see a resurgence in this genre.

They already made UT 2004 and it was awesome.

That was 14 years ago, mang.

Also, the UT2004 weapons sucked ass. Mostly. Rocket Launcher was kind of cool. So was the Lightning Gun. Mine Layer and Grenade Launcher were interesting weapons. But yeah, besides those, the weapons sucked and also needed to be rebalanced. Player scale was too small as well, and this coupled with dodgejumping gave even more emphasis on hitscan weaponry towards the higher levels of play, making it incredibly unfriendly to new players and boring to play.

Now to be fair, most, if not all of these problems actually came from UT2003, and they only had a year to fix things and add content. So in that regard, UT2004 did definitely salvage the game, but nevertheless, the problems remain.

 

[Worgen]

You're talking about arena shooters. The thing is though, until we see something as good as UT99 again, we're not gonna see a resurgence in this genre.

They already made UT 2004 and it was awesome.

That was 14 years ago, mang.

Also, the UT2004 weapons sucked ass. Mostly. Rocket Launcher was kind of cool. So was the Lightning Gun. Mine Layer and Grenade Launcher were interesting weapons. But yeah, besides those, the weapons sucked and also needed to be rebalanced. Player scale was too small as well, and this coupled with dodgejumping gave even more emphasis on hitscan weaponry towards the higher levels of play, making it incredibly unfriendly to new players and boring to play.

Now to be fair, most, if not all of these problems actually came from UT2003, and they only had a year to fix things and add content. So in that regard, UT2004 did definitely salvage the game, but nevertheless, the problems remain.

I don't recall any of the weapons 'sucking ass.' I recall it taking a bit to learn the odd link gun on the HellBender but once you figured it out, it was a beast. I guess you could say the shock rifle was hard to use but again, once you got the hang of it, it was really powerful.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

I don't recall any of the weapons 'sucking ass.' I recall it taking a bit to learn the odd link gun on the HellBender but once you figured it out, it was a beast. I guess you could say the shock rifle was hard to use but again, once you got the hang of it, it was really powerful.

Most of the weapons were weak and not satisfying at all to use. Shock Rifle was powerful, yes, but that just leads into my argument of the overreliance on hitscan weapons to actually be any sort of effective at higher skilled play. And besides the shock combo, the Shock Rifle also wasn't satisfying to use. And top of that, most of the weapons looked like plastic generic crap too.

UT99 had none of these issues at all.

 

[Worgen]

I don't recall any of the weapons 'sucking ass.' I recall it taking a bit to learn the odd link gun on the HellBender but once you figured it out, it was a beast. I guess you could say the shock rifle was hard to use but again, once you got the hang of it, it was really powerful.

Most of the weapons were weak and not satisfying at all to use. Shock Rifle was powerful, yes, but that just leads into my argument of the overreliance on hitscan weapons to actually be any sort of effective at higher skilled play. And besides the shock combo, the Shock Rifle also wasn't satisfying to use. And top of that, most of the weapons looked like plastic generic crap too.

UT99 had none of these issues at all.

I mean sure the lightning gun was hit scan but aside from that the only effective one I remember were duel pistols, the gatling gun was ok and the shock rifle was decent at long range or close if you got good with it but it was still a game of projectile weapons.

 

[sXeth]

Yeah, I would not consider Quake or Doom a "strategic shooter". The various Tom Clancy Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon games seem more appropriate for that description.

Ah yes I suppose. I've amended the title somewhat.

That subgenre is more specififically squad shooters, or even simulation (varying a bit by game)

What lost strategy? Instead of camping/controlling the rocket launcher spawn point, you camp/control key map points in other shooters. It's the same basic strategy of controlling the most important map area. You also need the same opponent anticipation skills as well regardless of shooter. Movement abilities and skills sorta vanished during the MMS trend but they have come back pretty strong recently. Hero-based MOBA inspired shooters contain both elements of needing overall map control for objective purposes and controlling specific areas for resources as well along with most having characters with tons of movement abilities.

Some very basic conceptual similarities. But there's no back and forth or chess match in (the majority) of the modern shooters. Two people meet up, usually one dies because TTK is so low. If someone doesn't die, the engagement may as well have not happened when their health restores completely.

You don't have to pick whether you go for the health boost, try and finish the enemy off immediately, or try and get the big weapon. For the most part, there aren't any *big weapons*, because of the loadout stuff (this for instance, has been on Destiny's glaring problems, a shoot-n-looter that can't have any actual impressive weapons because LOLPVPBalance).

There are team modes, and MOBA type stuff that have their own strategies. But at the actual individual basic 1v1 gameplay level, all those strategic decisions have been pretty pushed aside for twitch shooting.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Strategy is one of those incredibly vague words which essentially amounts to having overarching goals and needing a plan in order to achieve them. Virtually any game can be considered "strategic" in this sense.

I mean, I would say a lot of shooters have a tactical element. But even then I think you'd have a hard time claiming that modern shooters don't have a tactical element, just that the tactics are different. Calling some games "strategic shooters" sounds like an attempt to give certain in game tactical choices some kind of greater weight or merit than others, which seems arbitrary to me. Maybe it's just me though. I'm a maxi-scrub when it comes to shooters.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Some very basic conceptual similarities. But there's no back and forth or chess match in (the majority) of the modern shooters. Two people meet up, usually one dies because TTK is so low. If someone doesn't die, the engagement may as well have not happened when their health restores completely.

You don't have to pick whether you go for the health boost, try and finish the enemy off immediately, or try and get the big weapon. For the most part, there aren't any *big weapons*, because of the loadout stuff (this for instance, has been on Destiny's glaring problems, a shoot-n-looter that can't have any actual impressive weapons because LOLPVPBalance).

There are team modes, and MOBA type stuff that have their own strategies. But at the actual individual basic 1v1 gameplay level, all those strategic decisions have been pretty pushed aside for twitch shooting.

You do have that chess match feel to most good shooters still. The bad shooters are usually too simple because of a dearth of mechanics or just bad mechanics. MoH Warfighter was the best online MMS last-gen because the lean and slide mechanics made gunfights into chess matches, plus the game had just right TTK (6 bullets for a kill) for a MMS IMO, which did make players have to aim more and also actually deal with recoil. Ghost Recon Future Soldier's cover system made cover not just be useful for obvious defense but also for making it the fastest way to maneuver in a gunfight turning cover into arguably the player's best offensive tool.

I literally knew Destiny was garbage from the developer interview when they revealed the game for the first time at E3. The dev said something like "we have these classes but don't worry about picking the wrong one because they all play really similar". So what's the point of the classes then? That was a huge red flag. Then, I did try the beta and after an hour of playing it, I confirmed the game was shit. Just as you said, the game is balanced for PVP, the skill trees were so lackluster, worse than a lot of lame FarCry skills even. The fast, rogue-ish type class couldn't even sprint and reload at the same time. The powers were basically just a killstreak mechanic so they would work in PVP. If even half of the claims from this Destiny 2 video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZXABh6M8BA] are true, Bungie is/has become a completely incompetent developer from a technical standpoint.

I always hated shooters about weapon spawn points and such. I think the mechanic makes good and experienced players even better than newer players vs the standard COD-esque unlocking of guns/perks/etc (hell, I think everything should be unlocked from the beginning). Or use a similar system as CS where you get more money for playing better to buy better guns for the next match. I personally want to kill other players because I outplayed them, not because I know the weapon spawn points better.