FPS oh how I hate ye

vibrokatana

vibrokatana

New Member
Probably the most abused genre out there currently is first person gaming. It has gotten so far outside the norm of reality that it makes me almost want to cringe in annoyance when I want to play a game.

The annoyances:

  • It is almost always completely unrealistic:
    1. You can turn around as fast as you can move the mouse. I would love to see some people hold a 20+ pound weapon and try spinning in circles.
    2. There is no penalty based on range. Most games allow point blank targeting with a full size rifle. At that range a person with an smg or pistol would probably have the upper hand due to a greater range of motion.
    3. Very few games factor in stamina and damage accurately. If you get shot in the leg you should limp, if you get shot in the arm your should not be able to hold your primary weapon, etc. When you are shot you should loose blood till you die. This would be a great bane for medic type classes which are almost laughable in every game I have played.
  • The control scheme is completely dumb:

    From a programmatic standpoint you control a point in space with a radius going outward from which your bullets will travel. The closer in the target and the greater you need to compensate for movement. From a control standpoint this is pretty much the opposite from real life. Shooting a hand gun at a ranged target is much much harder then at someone say a few feet away. At point blank it becomes almost laudable, as players are restricted to a 90-110 degree cone while in real life you have a huge field of vision (> 200 degrees) and a strong awareness of your surroundings.
  • The lack of proper archetypes or anything besides kill kill kill

    Virtually no FPS games factor in stealth or other factors that differentiate from the centralized "soldier" stereotype. Sniping is a futile measure in most games as people can just shoot randomly at you while dancing like a crazed hyena. Stealth is practically dead, as shadows are hardly useful. Rather you have to wait for someone to come by and hope they don't glance in your direction.
  • It becomes a matter of hardware, ping and how much you are addicted to the game

    FPS requires a good 30+ FPS for you to accurately target something, once the range shrinks to point blank that requirement goes up drastically as you have to scan frames that have a larger probability of change.

    With game releases becoming faster and faster. With the next "big" thing coming out every few months or so it is impractical to put such a huge requirement into a game in order to fully enjoy it. While it is impossible to make a game with zero learning curve, developers need to reduce the entry cost so people will pick up and keep playing their game.

At this point I have a headache and am tired. Feel free to comment on the above ramblings. oww
 
I will agree that what you say is True Vibrokatana, Right now there is only one game that I know of that the Server Admins can Tailor the game to be very realistic, thats Call of Duty World at War, you can adjust how fast a person sprints which effects how far the person runs, How much Normal speed is allowed, even the Gravity which effects Jumping/Climbing and Stealth, the only adjustment to Far range and up close is the number of Rounds it takes, including Headshots to achieve a Kill, which is also Dependent upon the Health Set, Majority of Life Like can be simulated Minus Limping[that would be cool, can make every player have certain Perks or have just a Rifle Pistol and Grenade.
Some things will probably never achievable or at least game makers won't make them that way Because the Majority of Gamers want a fast paced Quick kill Victory instead of the Slower paced Realistic combat style and with Hardware improving every month the Developers are striving for the Unbelievable or so it seems, but if your like me then you will continue to play as it is a thrilling game[Not so much for the Winning or Killing on my part, but the Tactics of Combat] or there is always the Custom Servers, But Very good points :p
 
I think you hit on many points people usually don't think about with first person games.

I consider HL2 and its episodes to be one of the best FPS ever made, but it fails to use any of the realistic measures you list above.

I would love to see a developer make a game like TF2 where most classes could hide in the shadows and excel in it.

Nice review!
 
Phase 2 of the ranting:

- Lack of proper environment immersion. For instance lets say you are walking along on a wet surface and suddenly you want to go in another direction. Due to a wonderful concept of velocity tied into your balance this can be a rather interesting challenge. Most games treat you like an upright toilet plunger, no matter what you are always facing up.

- Cover sucks. Unfortunately due to the control scheme of most games you can have no interaction with walls. This means that being behind cover and not behind cover is just a few millisecond difference in how long a button is pushed. Some games try to fix this problem by allowing you to anchor behind objects (ala mass effect, vegas/2). But those present their own set of problems, so much so that few people choose to use them in multiplayer in vegas.
 
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