CloudAtlas said:
And sometimes it might not even be desirable. Call of Duty is hated by many, but its core gameplay would work well for such a wide range of titles - everything with guns in it and a "realistic" feel to it, if you want - without major changes. Hell, I would have loved it if the combat of, say, Mass Effect or Fallout 3 felt more like good old CoD or Battlefield.
So the games industry, which is already becoming rather conservative in testing new gameplay concepts in favour of just sticking to already determined templates, would be even better if more games played exactly like each other? I thought one of the major criticisms of Battlefield 3 and Medal Of Honour was that they tried too hard to play like COD, rather than having their own identity?
That's rather off topic, but: Yes, I do think so - to some degree. Cover shooters are hated by many because they're "all the same", but that's just, at its core, pretty much what real combat is like. So every combat in every game with guns aiming for a realistic feeling should be, at its core, a cover shooter. Since CoD is, mechanically, a very good cover shooter, that would mean that such games would feel more like CoD, yes. That doesn't mean that they shouldn't add anything to the experience, that you shouldn't try to improve upon the formula, or differ in details, or anything like that, but, you know, at its core. And, yea, I think games like, say, the Mass Effects or Fallout 3 would have definitely been better if they did. This is not to say, I want to stress, that
every game with guns should be like this, but every game that aims for a certain combat feeling.
And, in case of doubt, yes, I would prefer being conservative with gameplay concepts to being conservative with storytelling. But this is just my personal preference. And, don't worry, if both gameplay and story is pretty much same old same old, as with CoD, I'm not happy either.