Do Shooters really have strategy?

[the protaginist]

You are Commander Bishop of Rainbow Six. You've infiltrated a building in Vegas, held by terrorists. you've taken out three guards, suffering two shots along the way. as you make your way down the hallway, the only sound the hum of the near-by air conditioner, you come upon a room. you tell your team to wait as you scout it out. you walk up to the second entrance, your squad lining up along the opposite door. "Silencers on!" you whisper into your headset."Smoke and clear." you say. soon, you hear the hissing of a smoke grenade, slam open your door and shoot down the armed men, taking care to avoid hitting the hostages.


So yeah. Some shooters at least.

Tons of shooters rely heavily on strategy. The Rainbow 6 Vegas games are a prime example (since their genre is actually "tactical shooter.")

And i wasted too much time typing that up, obviously.

 

[Eldritch Warlord]

In any shooter if you have a strategy you have an edge over those that don't.

not really, i mean, in a way Shooters have some strategy. like gears of war, ducking and covering are key elements for strateging ( however you spell it) but then you got halo, where you run and shoot or spray and pray and if your hurt just rest behind a rock while your internal organs heal up.

I get the impression that you are moaning about/criticizing Halo's health system and feel compelled to point out that Gears has the same (without the excuse of energy shields).

EDIT: Also, for those who understand the difference, strategy can be as simple as deciding which tactics to use.

 

[Credge]

Depends on the game. CTF games with classes generally require some strategy. Most others? No, not really.

 

[Puppeteer Putin]

operation flashpoint had strategy... can't think of any other ones that do, though

If your in a competitive clan, any game. I remember devising tactics for BF: Vietnam and BF2 for teams of 16, as well as contingency plans for advances or retreats. Hell even CS:S can have strategy to it, the place men of snipers, teams of what and whom and how they move through the building. If a game requires some coordination to achieve it's your primary goal then there will be some strategy.

If you mean a strategy like "You two, go over there, I'll flank them" then yeah, those tend to fail. But tactics that come naturally to us (duck, aim, controlled firing, etc) are among the biggest parts. By the way, the biggest thing in my post was the difference between tactics and strategy, there's a difference.

Second.

Also, I think it makes a large difference depending on game type. Your standard deathmatches usually don't have much strategy other than 'stay together' or 'spread out' which, I suppose would qualify as tactics.

Objective based games, however, usually require players to operate as a team and committing to a specific strategy often means the difference between a force to be reckoned with and a bunch of players wearing the same color running around a map and getting owned.

By my limited understanding, that's strategy. It's all relative to the size of the force, so if we're talking a squad, what they do in relation to each other is strategy, while what the individual does is tactics. On the larger scale, where the commanders choose to send squads is strategy, and what the squads themselves do is tactics.

Your almost there. Strategy is the plan of action design to achieve a goal. Tactics is a conceptual action, conducts of engagement. How the battle should be fought is the tactics, whether it should be fought at all is the strategy.

Tactics are the "means to an end", the end being the Strategy.

 

[JamminOz07]

kill 'em all before they kill you always seems to work out as a good strategy for me.

 

[Merciless.Fire]

If shooters and war games actually worked like real life, aka setting up squads to do various tasks and having consequences for achieving/not achieving them, there would actually be strategy, of course those consequences having decent weight.

MAG may or may not be a big flop, but it is trying to incorporate these team based situations into a larger scale fight, and I really like the idea. Your squad of 8 taking over this point, meaning MG fire on the right flank, or defending point A meaning tank support from that location, etc.

Today's shooters have strategy, just not how we think. Running and gunning IS a strategy, one we downplay as easy, but strategy nonetheless. We use to cover, we reload before running out of a clip, we aim down the scope, flush out enemies using grenades, those are all strategies. There are strategies in shooters.

 

[DirkGently]

Strategies are for the overall plan of a war or battle. Your strategy calls for you to take the enemy's command center. How you organize your men into squads to follow that part of your strategy is a strategy. How your men actually go and take something is a tactic. So, no, not really. Tactics are mainly what shooters are about. Strategy games like Command & Conquer and StarCraft are about strategy.

 

[TMAN10112]

How much strategy is needed varies from game to game. One of the most strategic shooters I have played was Army of Two, The game puts a huge focus on aggro, requiring each played to rely on the other to back them up and make sure that they don't wind up getting flanked and shot to pieces.

Like yahtzee said "It's like it halloween every day and your giving out the candy, and the candy is bullets"

 

[Lancer723]

The level of strategy in online play is limited by the level of team cohesiveness and communication. When I play games online, I've found that when I play with several friends work together very well and usually have a defined strategy that specifies things like who is covering who and what area they are responsible for.

However when you go and play with a random group of people there is an obvious difference since there is no prior trust in your teammates, and thus you are less likely to strategize with them, not to mention that when you you choose your own team, you choose people you definitely LIKE.

But yeah there are definitely strategic elements to playing FPS', especially as you progress into higher levels of competitiveness.

 

[Avatar Roku]

Your almost there. Strategy is the plan of action design to achieve a goal. Tactics is a conceptual action, conducts of engagement. How the battle should be fought is the tactics, whether it should be fought at all is the strategy.

Tactics are the "means to an end", the end being the Strategy.

Oh, now I get it. I was sort of extrapolating from a brief mention of the difference in one of my Sci-Fi books. It explained it in context, but not in general the way you did.

 

[Jeronus]

Strategy? Screw that, I run in guns ablaze and hope the enemy doesn't fill me full of lead. I thought that the first time I played a FPS and shortly after that I learned how to take cover, snipe, conserve ammo, and use certain weapons in a certain situations. The game I an talking about is Farcry. Strategy is an integral part of shooters. Quick reflexes and superior aiming will get you so far before you end up face first in a pool of your own blood.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Generally speaking the answer is yes, but often such strategy is displayed in subtle ways.

First and foremost, a player must always be concious of the resources available to them. Depending upon the game, these may include health (and armor), ammunition, weapons (and vehicles, and even respawns. While truly effecient resource management might not be a key to victory, it certainly helps. Afterll, in a game like Battlefield, where there are limited supplies of lives and vehicles, support classes are critical and it's always in the best interests of a team to place their players in the roles best suited to their skills.

Beyond that, there is often a more subtle form of strategy that is often confused for technical skill. When presented with multiple targets, who do you direct your fire at first? Is it worth sending players to a particular trouble spot or is some other course of action called for?

Technical skill on the other hand focuses more on the "how" something get's accomplished. Placing yourself in a particular location as a sniper is a strategic (more technically it's a tactical) decision, but actually making proper use of your location involves technical skills. Deciding the best course of action is to throw a grenade into a building before assaulting inside relies heavily on being able to properly transition from firearm to grenade (if that's necessary), deliver the grenade to the correct location and transition back - all of which are technical skills.

Being able to execute an action is almost always more important in shooters than knowing what action is the best one to take - afterall, even a poor plan can be well executed and succeed but a great plan poorly executed generally fails.

 

[USSR]

where you run and shoot or spray and pray and if your hurt just rest behind a rock while your internal organs heal up.

And that differs from all other shooters how =p

I guess these days everyone's internal wounds heal in the matter of 6 seconds because we are god

 

[Haddi]

I'd say no, but when I think about it, the reason I do well in FPS's is because I play them so much I already figured out the basic strategy, which only needs to be tailored slightly from game to game.

 

[JWAN]

play GRAW, come back, and tell us what you found out

 

[sother2]

Use your buddy as a shield, and run away when enemies start firing at you.

Blame your friend for being a 'newb' and you're set.

Genious... why haven't i thought of that!

 

[Nutcase]

Situation: Quake 1v1, you know your opponent is a god in Counter-Strike but unfamiliar with Quake

Strategy: deny him hitscan weapons like the railgun as much as possible, since he knows how to use them (~ AWP) and doesn't know how to use slow projectile weapons; disengage more readily than you normally would, since you have a map knowledge advantage and gain bonuses faster than him

Tactics: keep picking up the railgun; do not allow the opponent to occupy railgun spawn for any length of time; disengage when low on health; use cover; go get mega-health and quad damage whenever they spawn; etc.

Mechanical execution: shoot fast and accurately; accelerate to top speed with minimum amount of strafe-jumps; etc.

 

[jakefongloo]

Why do you thing progamers are pros? They aim, have great reaction times plus strategy. In a 64man game, strategy counts for nothing, in a 1v1 or 4v4 strategy is a must.

64 players? then thats when stratagy is the most important.


It is hard to see stratagy in games like shooters where you're mainly driven by adrenaline and cocaine but any good stratagy is one that lasts for .5-5 seconds and then you come up with a new one. There are moments when stratagy is impossible for very linear fighting but everything from your position prior to fighting to how many bullets are in your clip at the end.

Just fyi i'm a brilliant stratagist but the most unluckiest basterd ever so when i turn a corner and see 3 people i retreat decide that the best way would be to (cod 4) flash bang, lunge the first person with the knife so that the sniper at the far end to my left who i know has a bolt-action m40a3 will miss the first shot assuming normal leading consiquences giving me enough time to dive behind cover shoot the other guy and knowing that if the guy had half a brain in the back would have retreated around a corner till he got his vision back. I shoot through the wall in the most predicable spot in the corner and if that didn't work (hip-fire is my biggest luck factor (spacifically it doesn't work)) i will compensate by throwing a granade in the air dash around the corner and keep dashing past his position to the nearest cover point so that he stays in place while my frag gently blows him to bloody hot pockets.

That is 3 stratagies all about 4 seconds all together if that was your plan from the very beginning there is no number to represent how many ways it could go wrong. spacifically it goes wrong right about stage 0 when the guy in the back shoots the ally in front thinking he was an enemy passes through him and hits me with a head shot because that shit happens about two-five times in one game...for me any way

i compensate for my luck facters and faults its just hard when you don't know they're coming

 

[sheic99]

~snip~

Try and organize strategic movements in a 64 man game. You will fail. Almost nobody will even try to follow you. What you mentioned were tactics, not organized movements of a team.

 

[Jumpman]

definitely. ever see a ctf match between a preformed group and a random selection group? nine out of ten times, the premade group dominates.