There's a question at the end of this, and I wonder if anyone who is an actual insider would care to answer.
So there I am, creeping along with good concealment, sighting in at just about the maximum distance the game can deal with. I line up an enemy soldier in the sights and -BANG- headshot.
Within a half second, every single enemy in the area has not only figured out my location, but is laying down accurate fire in my direction.
Now, I'm old enough and cranky enough to remember when one of the many reasons Doom was revolutionary was that enemies didn't attack you right away. They had to hear you or see you in order to become aware. Yes, they basically just stood there like lampposts if you hadn't alerted them yet, but this was the beginning of FPS gaming and I was a happy little preteen.
Flash forward a few years, and it seems that FPS developers haven't changed much. Sure, now the grunts mill about a little bit before that first shot, but once it's fired, everyone within three hundred yards lights up your position like the fourth of July. (Guy Fawkes Day for any Brits, whatever the heck else to the rest of you.) Every guard is instantly alerted. Now, real gunfire just doesn't work that way. You may have an idea where it came from, but good luck spotting the shooter instantly, and even then, people really under fire like that might hesitate (potentially fatally) and then will dive for cover. -Then- they look for the shooter.
Is this a game play balance thing, where programming the AI to react fairly realistically would make things too easy on the player? Is it just a holdover from programmers who are trying to make an enemy react how they think people in that situation would? Do players just expect enemies to react like the usually do, so programmers have to leave that in? Or would gameplay just be really less interesting if the enemies acted like a squad which really was under sniper fire? Or is it that the distances are so close that really, the sniper should be giving away his position quickly, and the limitation has more to do with the need to be close to your enemies in order to make a fun FPS?
I suppose if games didn't try to be all 'realistic,' it would be a lot less obvious when this was happening. When apparently human opponents have such a strange reaction, however, it does at least lean on the ol' fourth wall. Also, I know some games avert this, no need to list them. My question is why is this behavior there and does it bug anyone else?
So there I am, creeping along with good concealment, sighting in at just about the maximum distance the game can deal with. I line up an enemy soldier in the sights and -BANG- headshot.
Within a half second, every single enemy in the area has not only figured out my location, but is laying down accurate fire in my direction.
Now, I'm old enough and cranky enough to remember when one of the many reasons Doom was revolutionary was that enemies didn't attack you right away. They had to hear you or see you in order to become aware. Yes, they basically just stood there like lampposts if you hadn't alerted them yet, but this was the beginning of FPS gaming and I was a happy little preteen.
Flash forward a few years, and it seems that FPS developers haven't changed much. Sure, now the grunts mill about a little bit before that first shot, but once it's fired, everyone within three hundred yards lights up your position like the fourth of July. (Guy Fawkes Day for any Brits, whatever the heck else to the rest of you.) Every guard is instantly alerted. Now, real gunfire just doesn't work that way. You may have an idea where it came from, but good luck spotting the shooter instantly, and even then, people really under fire like that might hesitate (potentially fatally) and then will dive for cover. -Then- they look for the shooter.
Is this a game play balance thing, where programming the AI to react fairly realistically would make things too easy on the player? Is it just a holdover from programmers who are trying to make an enemy react how they think people in that situation would? Do players just expect enemies to react like the usually do, so programmers have to leave that in? Or would gameplay just be really less interesting if the enemies acted like a squad which really was under sniper fire? Or is it that the distances are so close that really, the sniper should be giving away his position quickly, and the limitation has more to do with the need to be close to your enemies in order to make a fun FPS?
I suppose if games didn't try to be all 'realistic,' it would be a lot less obvious when this was happening. When apparently human opponents have such a strange reaction, however, it does at least lean on the ol' fourth wall. Also, I know some games avert this, no need to list them. My question is why is this behavior there and does it bug anyone else?
