What would you do to spice up FPS's these days?

[Chris646]

Mecha zombie dinosaurs and space-ninjas that have guns that shoot fire-electrified shurikens and animal costumes that allow you to shoot lazers from your eyeballs or whatever and remove the cover-based shooting, and robo zombie dragons that you can ride like a mechanical bull. And jetpacks that have lightsabers in them for space combat. And then add in the colors that aren't in the gray-brown end of the color spectrum.

 

[CScuff]

Make it less shooty and more tactical. I mean, there is a big gaming difference between running through a maze of trenches trying to flush out enemy combatants, and well ... CoD. Add some capturable spawn points (the only purpose of which is as a place to spawn, not as a 'capture the flag' mission), make the levels more extensive and war-like ... so yeah, my suggestion to the melting pot is to move it away from a run-and-gun and more towards an actual battle.

This. Some people wish we would go back to the days of the Duke and leave military shooters... Well I wish they would make proper brown n bloom shooters, as it were. The Rainbow Six games are awesome. Even the newer Vegas games were great IMO. Go around one corner without looking - boom, dead. Storm one room without first analyzing the situation properly and positioning your team mates - boom, dead. Every move requires thought, patience and skill.

Maybe its just me, but sneaking into the the enemies base to find a nuke, killing only those you have to until you find yourself in a position that puts you right where you want to be to make up for your lack of men and then starting the proper firefight sounds like so much fun to me. More than kicking down the front door for some stupid slow motion shit and running along corridors all day.

Actually, I'd like to add a more realistic weapons and damage system. Take out regenerating health, have a biologically correct system of damage (as in, get shot in the foot 50 times? Unless you bleed to death you shouldn't die). And don't have this perfect accuracy crap. Put in realistic projectile motion, have some flags and dust clouds scattered through a level to simulate and indicate wind conditions, etc. If you want to improve upon an FPS you need to add depth. We have the basic point and shoot mechanics, we have the 'kill the bad guys' motivation, now we need to add challenge to it, add depth to the mechanics we do have and put in the mechanics we don't.

I also don't mind class systems, maybe don't have medics with insta-heals and stuff, amke it take a bit of time, or make them preventative, like patching up a wound before they become unconscious/dead from blood loss, or give them some adrenaline to help them through the pain and refocus their vision and stuff.

If only Arma II weren't so....so damn....Arma II-ey. If that makes any sense. I absolutely love the idea of the Arma franchise but...come on. I'd really like to see a lot of their ideals implemented into non-simulator FPS games. Namely sight zeroing, reasonable projectile physics, no health regeneration (you need a medic to patch you up, at least), great vehicle support and control...the list goes on. Take out all of the administration, paperwork, and desk jobs (metaphorically-ish speaking), and put that in an FPS. I'll take 3.

EDIT: Also, destructible terrain (please, for the love of God, not like Red Faction, not like Red Faction...) but realistically. An RPG will be able to take a chunk out of a large building, or put a hole in a cement wall. Make it happen.

 

[LazyAza]

1. color
2. creative enemy and level design
3. new mechanics besides simply bigger better guns
4. settings, concepts and worlds that are ANYTHING but realistic and set in modern or old times

Basically every time the words "modern" "space marine" "like call of duty" or "like halo" are mentioned I would be throwing something at whoever said such a thing.

Also ffs no more cover systems, give me lean, ammo variants, make shotguns overpowered and for the love of god let me duel wield small calibur weapons and have grenades that explode on impact.
If every shooter had these fundamental basics I would play anything, anything that involved pointing guns at doods and at least be content. Now if they could just make each game unique, interesting and have cool new mechanics on top of solid well made shooting I would have so much more interest in the genre than I do now, which outside of Bulletstorm this year is near non-existent.

The sooner everyone gets as far away from the CoD and Halo models the better.

 

[Nightvalien]

i would do a mix of painkiller with bulletstorm and some of fallout mechanics, to me a good game is one that focus on various play styles instead of just shooting shit from cover, there would be melee play style, fps and a combo of gun and melee that would be awesome.

 

[emilionator]

I would support a battlefront for ps3 I love battlefront 1

 

[Baralak]

You know, I feel like I should mention Bulletstorm. While it does indeed have cover, regenerating health, 2 weapons and a lot of brown, it's incredibly unique and over the top in every other conceivable way. I mean, you have to learn and practice to score more points if you want more ammo and armor, every weapon has 2 features. For example, there's a gun that fires like a regular pistol, or you can use it's alt fire, and fire a flare that sends enemies flying into the air, and explode. You can slide on the floor, you can use an electric rope, called a leash, to bring enemies in and start up a bullet time for more points, and you can even kick enemies into spiked walls and stuff. Did I mention it has a gun that fires a spinning drill, and another that just flatout fires cannonballs? The game is also incredibly funny, and it's MP consists entirely of Co-op to score more points as a team. It's kinda similar to Horde mode from the Gears of War games.

The Escapist went far enough to call it the next evolutionary step for the FPS,

 

[funguy2121]

I have always loved FPS I think they bring a level of immersion that other games cannot bring. These days they're getting a bad rap because MOST(I am not saying all there are pretty good and original FPS these days) end up being a clone of something already existing.
So what would you do to bring creativity and originality back into this genre.

Every FPS is to some degree a clone, with precious few exceptions, in that it is largely built upon some of the mechanics of its peers. Face it, a game that focuses almost exclusively on cut sce-I mean shootouts is rarely going to have a shit-ton of originality to it. I say this as a huge FPS fan (there's no better way to go multi. Mario Kart my ass!).

I'd like to see the tiny health meter that regenerates faster than Wolverine retired forever, as well as the 2-gun limit. 1 or 2 big guns only (unless you're packing around a TOW-2 or a Stinger or something) and more than 1 pistol would be nice, at least. More for the games that aren't going for gritty/realistic/all of the other words that have lost a substantial amount of meaning through internet overuse. Boss battles. Ambushes. Hell, the Metroid Prime games were some of the least realistic gunplay FPS-y and most video game-y titles ever, and yet they had some of the most spectacular ambushes and frenzied, challenging battles from the first person perspective EVER. All of the shit-brown games would do well to take a que from Retro Studios and get creative with enemy positioning and AI.

 

[Pegghead]

I'd probably shove in clever uses for the shooting, like having a level in the next Modern Warfare in which Price and Soap team up to do shots!

 

[Gamer_152]

It's interesting, a lot of ideas in here are actually things which have already been implemented in FPS games in recent years; a tactical approach, non-deathmatch multiplayer modes, character customisation, jetpacks, sprinting, lack of cover-based shooting etc. Granted though, some of these have been done more than others and there are a lot of different ways to do them, statements like "give me a bunch of different ways to kill guys" are actually very vague and come with about a million different ways to implement. Likewise the idea of combining the best of modern FPSs with the best of old FPSs is a little vague and arguably flawed too. The modern FPSs have come about as a direct result of people taking old school FPSs, and adding new ideas to them. Additionally while there may be pieces of old FPS games worth incorporating into current FPSs the large majority of them aren't, on the whole these ideas don't exist anymore because better alternatives were found, if Duke Nukem Forever taught us anything it's that you can't release a game from the 90s in 2011 and for it to just work.

Additionally, the idea of realism for the sake of realism isn't something that ever works that well in practise, games tread a fine line between simulation and well... Games, but at their core they are the latter and when you start sacrificing gameplay for other components of the experience it doesn't usually end well. Oh, and if you are considering the idea of a console FPS where you hold about eight weapons at a time, consider that you'd have to do some pretty amazing (perhaps impossible) things with the control scheme to accommodate that. I could go on about regenerating health, cover, etc. but I think you get the idea.

I do like the ideas of less modern military games, a bajillion guns, more RPG elements and more colour though. In fact if there's one way you can say Halo still deviates from the norm in this day and age it's that it's actually a colourful series of games. I don't have any really strong ideas, I'm not a game designer, and frankly I think the FPS market could do with quietening down for a while but then that's just what everyone else has been saying for the past few years. If there's one thing we must remember though it's that, while innovation should always be encouraged, a game just being different by no means makes it good.

 

[pyrosaw]

I don't find FPS's to have any problems. People seem to like it. The FPS genre has always done this. But, if I had to improve, better narrative, more guns, more colorful graphics, and balanced gameplay. These are things we all like. Oh, jetpacks wouldn't hurt.

 

[funguy2121]

There were dozens of Wolfenstein 3D clones, even more "Doom Toos," during the early years - this is a problem the FPS genre has always had.

At the moment gaming in general, and FPSs in particular, need to consider aiming for more focused gameplay directed at a more focused audience. This is difficult, AAA games are basically the equivalent of movie blockbusters: they're extremely expensive to produce and they need to appeal to a very wide audience if they want to be financially successful. Purposefully trying to restrict your audience makes your project quite a bit riskier and the industry wasn't a fan of that when the economy was doing well - not it just seems suicidal.

However risky ventures can pay off - look at Bioshock. Now compared to System Shock and System Shock 2 the formula was watered down quite a bit, probably to make the game more accessible, but the final product still stood out in terms of atmosphere and gameplay and did well critically and financially.

I think this is a very big reason Nintendo has survived in spite of having a (too tired to form an eloquent sounding donkey metaphor, sorry) - in spite of being stubborn as all fucking Hell and occasionally investing in some colossally bad decisions. They always find an IP that uses focused gameplay, very largely ignoring current trends in the industry, often at their own peril. And the payoff in original gameplay is very often (um, a big word for A LOT). Clearly I'm too insipid at the moment to be communicating with other terrestrial creatures, so adieu, Escapist, and remember, I love you all.

No, I do not think Ryan Seacrest is gay. But I've been wrong before.

 

[xXAsherahXx]

I think some more melee and better movement would be great. For a moment during said melee the camera could go to the third person. Maybe the writers could include a decent story once in a while, perhaps a twist or two.

 

[hailfire]

I want to see an FPS where almost everyone is black, (and anyone who says that's racist is wrong, because no one would freak out if a game was made with mostly white people), and I would also enjoy an FPS that made fun of other FPSs, the the cover based shooting of gears of war, or the inconsistancy of the halo rocket launcher not having lock on in the future, and the pistol being really weak in the future. I'd also like to see a game make fun of the vehical sections of mass effect, or the fact that standing around in COD magically heals you from damage.

 

[5mj7R7yf4Dwr3gdZyyu9PeGNwYjlNrjzuh3iTXQG]

I've mentioned this elsewhere, as Disney had the opportunity to run with it and totally failed.

Make a thief-style sneaker that is totally kill free.

You can change the environment, create darkness and quiet places, lock doors, unlock doors, clean up messes, bypass security, maybe even trap your enemies, but neither shooting them nor even knocking them out. Because nothing really says badass like getting in, getting the crown jewels, the magic macguffin and the artifact of doooom, and rescuing the princess and the orphans right under everyone's nose.

Oh, and take the L4D model for things other than zombies: Make a fiercely-cooperative game based on a movie or story style (complete recognizable, identifiable characters with varying dialog) in other genres.

Other than that, we haven't yet seen a dedicated game that is a cooperative-capable first-person dungeon romp.

238U.

 

[Double A]

What I would do?

Make Tiberium. That GI preview looked amazing. Squad you can create/control, tactical objectives, a jetpack, multipurpose weapon, and all this in the single player? Yes please.

Or, you know, just eliminate cover-based shooters. Or maybe a suit of armor with a bunch of guns welded to it like War Machine. That would be awesome, and it'd give the devs an excuse to have crazy high health and a giant arsenal of weapons for the main character.

Oh, wait, I know. A gun that shoots wind or something. Totally useful.

 

[Mordwyl]

*sigh* ... I miss Thief. At least I still have Portal.

 

[Austin Higbee]

I would give the player the ability to construct, destroy, or repair shelter or walls... also the enemies can break through the walls with time but it will slow them down a bit. This would also add a bit of strategy to the giant mass of dull repetitive first person shooters in the world!

 

[Ninjat_126]

No cover based shooting, but instead just a guy (or girl) that can take many bullets. Weird weapons and creative ways to kill people, like kicking them into various objects. Bullet time should be included aswell. Also a scene where the protagonist rides a helicopter and is about to start a turret section, but then decides that turret sections suck, detaches the turret, jumps out of the helicopter and walks on foot with his (or hers) brand new turret a la Crysis.
He (or her) should also belong to a minority. Caucasians are too mainstream.
Oh yeah, and his (or hers) melee weapon is a scythe and the game takes place in a world that mixes elements of fantasy, steampunk, cyberpunk and feudal japan. With airship pirates.

Now THAT would be an FPS I'd play.

HELL YES! Consider it preordered.

9001% less of the following: Multiplayer, space marines, cover, limited loadouts, regenning health, bugs, dlc that consists solely of five multiplayer maps, and for the love of god no more god damned war games!

1. I like having to use cover in games. Not constantly, but I like the idea of using patience and skill to avoid death instead of charging up a hill forever.

2. Regenerating health works. It's overused and unrealistic, but it isn't bad in itself.

3. Space Marines are almost a genre in themselves. Overused and cliche, but there's nothing bad about them in themselves. Without them, you wouldn't have Doom, Halo, WH40K, Vanquish, Quake, Aliens, Starship Troopers, Starcraft, Crysis and basically any humans-vs-aliens war scenarios.

4. No bugs? I wish.


We shouldn't be trying to go back to the good 'ol days. We should be making new games. Hopefully Resistance 3 and Bioshock Infinite will break free of their precursors and be truly excellent Threequels.

 

[SenorNemo]

What I would do?

Make Tiberium. That GI preview looked amazing. Squad you can create/control, tactical objectives, a jetpack, multipurpose weapon, and all this in the single player? Yes please.

I have that issue around somewhere, and as a C&C fan, I was kind of exited too. However, it was cancelled for a reason: it did not meet quality standards set by the development team and the EA Games label sucked so bad, they couldn't make a salvageable game with the time and money they had. I wish it didn't. Maybe they'll dust it off one day and try again, who knows? While they're at it, maybe a decent new C&C sans DRM out the wazoo.

Anyway, I've always thought that a game based on the idea of Starship Troopers would be epic. No, not the movies, the Heinlein book. It'd be similar enough to modern FPSs to be marketable, but at the same time, mix elements of tank warfare (with long range weapons, it'd be useful to find and maneuver in and out of hull down position, for instance) and dogfighting (with the rocket boot things they have).

Also, I'd like to see shooter levels designed more like puzzle games, where the solution more often than not entails blowing things the hell up. Not so much a gameplay feature as a design philosophy. Still, this is kind of hard to reconcile with non-linearity, but given how linear most shooters are nowadays, I can't see this being too much of a problem in the big picture.