What makes a good FPS?
- Thread starter Gindaff
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Has to be fun,
solid mechanics,
good level design,
good feedback from weapons via sound and visuals,
range of weapons and/or abilities,
game is balanced competitively if it is competitive (usually are) if its primarily co-op or single player enemies are balanced and varied enough to support extensive play like this,
focus (dosent try and be all things to everybody just takes what works and ditches the rest)
If its focus is single player a strong story and setting are a must otherwise they are just highly preferable.
Thats all I can think of but really I dont think there is any magic formula to make a good FPS just reasons that people find to say its good when its finished.
solid mechanics,
good level design,
good feedback from weapons via sound and visuals,
range of weapons and/or abilities,
game is balanced competitively if it is competitive (usually are) if its primarily co-op or single player enemies are balanced and varied enough to support extensive play like this,
focus (dosent try and be all things to everybody just takes what works and ditches the rest)
If its focus is single player a strong story and setting are a must otherwise they are just highly preferable.
Thats all I can think of but really I dont think there is any magic formula to make a good FPS just reasons that people find to say its good when its finished.
I'll add a high skill ceiling to what dimensional said. In other words, the game should reward mastery of its mechanics.
Freedom. Freedom to explore like in stalker. Thats why I didnt like Rage as much as I could have. Because despite loading screens saying exploration was rewarded, there was virtually nothing to explore. In that sense, Rage felt like a steep backwards in terms of non-cod/bf FPS gaming.
I would also add that the game needs SOMETHING to help it stand apart from the crowd. A FPS can be solidly put together and still be bad. I guess that would fit into your point about Focus but Focus doesn't JUST have to be single player/multi player focus can also be focusing on a specific gimmick to help propel it out of the deadly realm of mediocre obscurity. In some ways if a game pulls of its focus well enough it can be forgiven for coming up short in other departments.dimensional said:
There's nothing really specific to FPSs that makes succeeding with an FPS different from succeeding with any other type of game it really just comes down to delivering an experience that resonates with your audience.
Sure! This is mostly a thing that comes into play for competitive FPS vs. single-player FPS.Gindaff said:All good points, keep doing my work for me!
This is interesting and not something i've come across whilst browsing other forums, any examples?Kahunaburger said:
Basically, the skill ceiling is the point where you get diminishing results for being more skilled at the game.
A straightforward example is tic-tac-toe vs. chess. In tic-tac-toe, once you learn some simple strategies, you can literally never lose. Any further mastery of tic-tac-toe is a waste of time. This means that tic-tac-toe has a very low skill ceiling. Chess, on the other hand, has been described as taking a "lifetime to master." There's always something else you can learn about chess strategies and the meta-game, which means that chess has a very high skill ceiling.
In FPS games, the better competitive ones have a higher skill ceiling. It's why, for instance, Team Fortress 2 still has a thriving competitive scene and Modern Warfare 2 doesn't. TF2 actually has interesting skill ceiling variation in-game - Heavy, for instance, has a much lower skill ceiling than Demoman. Unsurprisingly, with the exception of Medic, the TF2 classes that tend to get played the most in competitive are the ones with the highest skill ceilings.
To give a few examples of mechanics like this:Gindaff said:All good points, keep doing my work for me!
This is interesting and not something i've come across whilst browsing other forums, any examples?Kahunaburger said:
Magicka is a very obvious case where mastery of the game mechanics are critical to success.
Alot of FPSs would limit your health and ammo to reward skillful gameplay that allowed you to conserve ammunition and avoid getting hurt. (Bioshock would be a modern example of this)
Another game that was almost entirely based around mastery of its mechanics would be the first 2 Ninja Gaiden games or the Devil May Cry series which both assaulted the player with very challenging content and would only reward the player with success when the player had mastered the combat system.
All games do this to varying degrees (otherwise it would be impossible to fail a mission or succeed a mission) but as a general trend alot of games that focus primarily on their story tend to focus less on the skill cap of their game because they don't want to alienate their players by making the story so difficult to complete that people become frustrated.
Now this also isn't to say that all games need to be hard. Hard is not the same thing as rewarding people for mastery of the game mechanics. If someone is losing because they don't understand what they are doing or are approaching the problem wrong is different than if the player is simply given an unfair matchup and that's something that many games struggle with because they want their content to be challenging but not unfair.
TimeSplitters. Just whack some TimeSplitters in there and it'll be an incredible FPS.
Either them or 007...
Either them or 007...
Smooth controls (think CoD)
Good sound effects
Flowing gameplay
Challenging gameplay
Fair difficulty curve
Player-driven story (think Valve FPSs)
Varied enemy design (think original Quake)
Decent AI (think Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway)
Artistic level design (think Republic Commando)
Good sound effects
Flowing gameplay
Challenging gameplay
Fair difficulty curve
Player-driven story (think Valve FPSs)
Varied enemy design (think original Quake)
Decent AI (think Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway)
Artistic level design (think Republic Commando)
Replayability. You got to give the player a reason to play through the game multiple times. Achievement hunting alone just won't cut it.
Ah... i think you should specify if a single player one, a coop based one or a PvP based one. The things they need might overlap here and there, but in general they are very different breeds, a single player FPS for example shares more with Mass Effect than with CS.Gindaff said:
Interesting weapons for one thing
A good example is from the Halo series, they have a fine mix of human standard firearms and alien plasma weaponry, they have a gun which fires pink needles that make the target explode (needler) that alone makes it fun.
To make it good it must also be balanced
A good example is from the Halo series, they have a fine mix of human standard firearms and alien plasma weaponry, they have a gun which fires pink needles that make the target explode (needler) that alone makes it fun.
To make it good it must also be balanced
When asking yourself broad questions, you must first ask yourself "What kind of FPS are we talking about?".Gindaff said:
There is no universal standard for FPS's, it can range from fast-paced lone-wolf titles such as Call of Duty to the more realistic and tactical Battlefield series. Different FPS's will focus on different things, there is no way for developers to make an universal FPS that has everything.
If you are making something like Call of Duty, which is based around being able to just drop in and drop out whenever you feel like it (people with jobs might not have as much time to invest in games, they just want something they can play right away for 30 minutes) you will need to make sure that the player's progress and performance is not dependent on other players. You should be able to perform well without having to deal with squad-members and such, i.e. little to no player investment.
However, if you were to make a game such as Battlefield, you would need the opposite. Player investment would have to be critical in determining whether you win or not, with loads of ways and opportunities for team-play. The squad system in the Battlefield series is a great example of player investment paying off greatly, as it can give you huge advantage against someone who doesn't utilize it.
There are, of course, technical issues that always need to be addressed. Things like input lag can just completely wreck the game, as well as wonky bullet-physics.
So if you need more information for your paper, narrowing down and categorizing what kind of FPS's there are is crucial, its important that you don't end up going everywhere without touching upon anything.
You need to give the player the ability to do awesome things, but not the awesome things that you thought of. If the player wants to pull off a really awesome headshot, you should let him, but don't tape the reticule to an enemy's head for them.
Basically, just flesh out the game, give it AI and settings that make for dynamic and fluid firefights that support a wide variety of playstyles. And try to make sure that everything the player does has meaning. Destructible environments are great, as are weapons that make satisfying noises.
So, what I'm saying is, blend Battlefield and Halo and you've got it.
Basically, just flesh out the game, give it AI and settings that make for dynamic and fluid firefights that support a wide variety of playstyles. And try to make sure that everything the player does has meaning. Destructible environments are great, as are weapons that make satisfying noises.
So, what I'm saying is, blend Battlefield and Halo and you've got it.
for today's majority:
-Need to be called CoD
-Broken Sniper scope mechanics
-Camp encouragement
-10 x Prestige to show how much time you wasted
-Russia as enemy(Worst case:Terrorists from Genericstan)
-shitty campaign
-Manly and buff characters
-game breaking kill streaks
-Knife in foot>50. cal in Chest
-15$ mappacks
-Spawn-camping
-Health-Regen
-terrible Hit-detection
for an actual good FPS:
-None of the above
-Need to be called CoD
-Broken Sniper scope mechanics
-Camp encouragement
-10 x Prestige to show how much time you wasted
-Russia as enemy(Worst case:Terrorists from Genericstan)
-shitty campaign
-Manly and buff characters
-game breaking kill streaks
-Knife in foot>50. cal in Chest
-15$ mappacks
-Spawn-camping
-Health-Regen
-terrible Hit-detection
for an actual good FPS:
-None of the above