Auto-aim, cover, health regen in shooters: why the hate?

[Chechosaurus]

I think that aim-assists is vital in any console FPS. It makes up for a lack of precision of the controller as for Halo: Reach, I have noticed very little impact from aim-assist on the multilayer game. Also, correct me if I'm wrong here, but I don't believe that the sniper or beam rifles have aim-assist (if they do, it is not as predominant). I personally think that the guys at Bungie have made the aim assist in Halo: Reach spot on. Just enough to give you a helping hand but not enough to allow any ham handed troll to get a head shot with a DMR half way across the map.

As for cover systems.... Well, in GOW, it got tiresome very quickly. Rainbow Six: Vegas 1 + 2 however; the system in that was very good because I found that you never spent too long in monotonous whack a mole fights and that it was far more intense than games such as GOW. Same goes for Mass Effect 1 + 2. There are more plenty more gunfights in the second game but they never felt too repetitive. It was only on my 3rd play-through on Insanity that I started to get bored but that was only because the fights dragged on so long and I spent 3/4 of my time waiting for regen....

Now, health regen is something that really grates me. I have no issue with shield regen as in Mass Effect 1 or Halo: Reach. That being said, what does annoy me about the shield in Reach is that it accounts for about 4/5 of your health. However... I think that in multilayer, this works perfectly well. Now, as for Mass Effect 1, they got the balance between health and shield just right. Your shield recharged, your health didn't. It meant that you had to plan ahead and that you couldn't go wasting medi-gel willy nilly and it also meant that if you were shit, you would die a hell of a lot more often. That is way it's suppose to be.

 

[The Lunatic]

Shooters are all about reaction speed and accuracy.

Auto-aim defeats the need for this.

You don't need that great reaction-speed if you'll have a weak "Lock-on" to a moving target.

And as for accuracy, well, that's obviously mitigated.

The reason is simply that, when it comes down to it, a gameplay is not the optimal way to play a shooting game.

As much as I'm sure it pains console players to hear, when it comes to shooters, PC is just plain superior.

 

[octafish]

I just don't like it when cover systems aren't coupled with good AI, which seems to be most of the time. They never seem to utilize a proper Overwatch system of advancing on you or flanking. It's wack a mole most of the time. That and poor level design like ME2 "Wow look at all the cover in this next room, do you think there may be an ambush here?"

Regenerating Health, well I liked the Rainbow Six games and original Ghost Recon, it just feels kinda cheap to my old fogey ways.

Auto aim/aim assist. As long as I can turn it off I'm ok.

 

[sb666]

cover makes games repetive its good if you can run and gun and cover
auto aim is ok depending on the game
health i don't mind health regeneration but i miss health bars because this crap where the screen gets covered in blood makes it hard to see what im doing

 

[newuseforvintage]

Cover systems: Don't really have a problem with those, although I would like to see a "lean" button in atleast ONE console game by the end of this year.

I really don't understand why FPSs don't have a lean function, it makes no sense. I guess they don't want to deepen the gameplay at all. If you go back over 2 years ago, you'll find a lean function in an online shooter; Metal Gear Online is a TPS that allows for shooting in the 1st-person perspective and you can LEAN while shooting when in 1st-person. If a TPS can do this online, why can't a FPS do this?

The latest MoH has a lean function which I feel was implemented really well. Not so much a single button but two used together which then snaps back to cover when released.

OT I really have no major gripe with those game mechanics. Health regen can be jarringly unrealistic when you are chasing a fully immersive experience but, then again, I don't usually pick up a game with that sort of health system when I'm looking for full immersion so I don't feel I'm losing out.

 

[badgersprite]

Yeah, the complaint is really just that practically every single game in the FPS genre with any vague attempt at realism, and literally a slew of other games in third person, operate on these mechanics, with little effort at innovation or alteration.

 

[Layz92]

Auto Aim is just depressing because I always feel like I am not getting the kills. The game is getting them and I am just enabling it to go ahead when I play on a friends console (don't have my own). Chest high walls with magnets are kinda annoying when you are trying to attack something on your side of the wall and the camera goes crazy when you try to catch a look at where they are without detaching yourself (which usually makes you stand up... usually into a sniper's or MG's sights). As for health regen... My problem is what it enables in single as well as multiplayer. You can run front on to an MG and get pounded into the dust but as long as you maintain a non-red square millimeter of your screen you can crawl behind an obstacle for 3 seconds and rejuvenate fully. Not exactly motivation for tactical and survival instincts. A medpack system makes you pick your targets and use cover efficiently. One reason I still play DoD so much.

 

[ClassicJokester]

Personally, I like the slight aim-assist in Halo (except when magnetism would pull your sniper rifle scope off of the guy you were TRYING to shoot cause some guy walked in front of him...), but I really don't care for the "snap-to" aim-assist in most ADS based shooters.

 

[Buizel91]

Auto Aim:
Only appears on Consoles.
Play PC.

Lies, i use it on Starwars Battlefront 2 For the PC.

OT: Auto Aim i don't mind sure it makes it "unrealistic" but it's a game...

Cover system: Love Cover...if it's use correctly (Gears of War, Alpha Protocol.)

And i aint to fussed with Health Regen either, although it get's annoying in most games.

 

[Deadpewl]

At level 20-something on borderlands I realized that auto aim was on. I felt dirty and started up a new character.

Cover systems can be good but it gets annoying seeing chest high walls everywhere. I cant help but think "what are the odds that that pillar was exactly that size and fell in that exact spot?" Besides that most of the time the characters seem like theyre on roller skates.

Health regen never really made sense. It did when it was shields but call of duty has no excuse.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

As much as I'm sure it pains console players to hear, when it comes to shooters, PC is just plain superior.

While PC shooters are certainly superior when it comes to the aiming, it still requires an equal level of a different skillset to do well in a console shooter.

For example tactical thinking, knowing when to be aggressive and when to be stealthy, being aware of one's surroundings, knowing how to use the map and how to move effectively around it etc etc...

 

[Yeq]

Think about playing with health regen. You throw yourself in, shoot everything, and at the end of the firefight you're either dead or alive, nothing in between, since it doesn't matter a damn how hurt you got. Without it, you have to be a little more careful. Walking around with 15% health and looking for a health pack might be frustrating but on the flip side it's tense and engaging. I'm not sure if it's purely psychological but to me regen health feels more arcade-y and less immersive, even if I don't miss being killed repeatedly because I saved on 2 health like a fucking idiot.

Oh, and I've never bought the realism argument. Someone saying "It's lucky I got being cover because my legs have been blown off and in five seconds they shall grow back" is unrealistic but so is "It's lucky I found these bandages because my lungs have been punctured so I am in desparate need of some cloth to wrap round myself". It's a game. You want realism, play Stalker. Regen or not, it's still a pretty ridiculous representation of actual warfare.

 

[Olikunmissile]

You all fail to mention the worst health regent yet.

Original Getaway. Rest against a wall.

Oh how I loathed it.

You want realism, play Stalker.

And oh how I adore Stalker for it. Master difficulty? Yes please.

 

[Netrigan]

Auto-Aim: I regularly defend this because the thing PC fans forget is they had it, too. In the early days of mouselook, there were still lots of people who didn't use the mouse when playing. Duke Nukem 3D featured auto-aim on the z-axis. One of my favorite games was Blood, which had perhaps the most generous auto-aim I have ever seen in a game (also one of the toughest). Basically a cone extended out from your weapon and anything within that cone was targeted. Meaning, the further away they were, the less accurate you had to be, so you could literally popped out of a corner and fire off shots completely blind and hit enemies easily. Consoles need an auto-aim feature just like those early PC games needed the feature... although I doubt consoles will outgrow the feature.

Cover: there's nothing wrong with cover-based combat systems... per se. The problem is that it becomes extremely easy to make a really boring game using it. I put forth GTA IV as an example. With enough ammo, from the right piece of cover, you can take out an army. Combat is just tedious. Keep your head down and wait for the other guy's head to pop out from cover. Shoot. Rinse, later, repeat. Only when you're in shoot-out with cops does the tension rise, because you know you have to keep moving or they will wear you down.

Health/Shield Regeneration: it can work, but it's a fucking lazy mechanic nine times out of ten. Old shooters forced you to change tactics depending on your situation. Withholding ammo and health (or just bad combat choices) forced the player to change his usual tactics and employ others. These days in which you're assured 100% health going into every battle, you tend to play extremely aggressively the great bulk of the time, because you know you can just hide in a corner until you feel better. Combat in health-regenerating games tends to be more repetitive for this reason. A good game can shake up that dynamic, but most only rarely escape for brief moments.

 

[Jekken6]

For health regeneration, I think it should only be used based on the setting. Like, say Crysis where you have this suit, it makes sense that health regenerates, but in games that are supposed to be in a totally modern setting has regenerating health, it makes no sense.

 

[ImprovizoR]

Cover system + health regeneration + auto aim = go to cover whenever you get shot, pop up an automatically take out the guy, repeat forever. It makes the game 10x easier and boring. There is no thinking involved. All you have to do is go to cover, pop up every once in a while and push the shoot button.
In the good old days of med-kits, improvised cover and manual aim you needed to develop skill to play the game. You needed to think, and time your actions well. These modern additions were added so that kids can play games just as good as everyone else because if more people buy the game more money to the developer and publisher. They don't care about the quality of their product anymore, just sales. And they sacrificed a lot of quality for it.

 

[JSDodd]

I personally quite like regenerating health systems. It used to piss me off in older FPS' when you would be forced to enter gun battles with barely any health because you ate a random grenade in the last one or an enemy with telescopic eyes got some lucky hits on you.

I feel like regenerating health helps makes the game 'flow' better as it keeps you moving forward at a decent pace rather than being terrified that random enemies will appear and chip away at your finite health. If anything i played far more defensively (read: hid in cover a lot more) in older FPS' because i knew that i could often rely on AI teamates to fight for me and thus i wouldn't need to risk losing precious health.
But despite this i do prefer Borderlands style health systems to say, the system in the newer CoD games, so don't flame me.