Features shooters desperately need.

[Scars Unseen]

So the trend I'm seeing are that the two most popular requests here are:

1) Less realism

2) More realism

...

 

[The Sanctifier]

Also, voice menus, especially in console games. It allows you to do a lot with the flavour of the world and/or character models/character classes, and it lets people actually communicate with one another.

Something That I think would be really cool is a first person shooter which also lets you build your own base of operations.

IT could be a little like Minecraft where you place down blocks and such to make your own fortifications, and while you'd get points for shooting the enemy, you'd get even more for coming up with elaborate traps to kill them.

From what I've seen of it, Natural Selection 2 sort of has that. One person acts as commander, playing the game as an RTS-type deal, where the other players on your team are the units. You can set rally points, put down structures which players can help build faster, that sort of thing.

That sounds like it could be interesting, might have a look. Funny thing is that, Just a few hours after making this post, I stumbled across a new indie release on Steam called Ace of Spades. It's a FPS that looks a bit like Minecraft and has a fully destructible environment and lets you place down things like bunkers, bridges and other fortifications. Its not quite exactly free building, but it is rather entertaining.

Edit. Oops. Sorry If I did the quoting thing wrong. I'm still a bit new to the whole forum thing.

 

[Aaron Foltz]

Sorry, I have to add my 2 cents. Brothers in Arms: Hell Highway was good. Only allowed to carry 2 guns, tactical (to a point), and slower paced. I'm sure there are things that would have made that game better but enjoyed none the less.

 

[xDarc]

Shooters need to go back to the retro feel, no more "realistic" garbage we are constantly being subjected to. I still go back to my UT 2003 and 4, these are the epitome of fun FPS, just hard to get a MP game going.

Agree. I've been playing since the early 90s and they have slowed down movement so much that they aren't even fun or challenging any more. They did it on purpose, that's how they made so many people buy them.

UT or Quake would never sell 50 million copies and if they ever did, about 49 million would quit in frustration from being constantly wtfpwned and ask for their money back.

No, the only reason modern FPS outsells movies like Titanic and sets new records every year is because any casual can pick it up, score some kills, and feel good about themselves.

I'd like to see a developer with some stones show kids today what shooters used to be. I remember playing FEAR team deathmatch in 2006 and going 100 kills/5-10 deaths in a 15 minute pub match and listen to everyone whine. All I could think was where did all these awful players come from?

 

[xDarc]

I was just playing Battlefield and I kept getting sniped by some douche... If somebody gets the jump on you in any way, you're screwed...

THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT!

The game is designed on purpose to not allow anyone to be too good. The game wouldn't sell if everyone didn't get kills. You stop to shoot someone, someone else stops to shoot you, and somebody else again stops to shoot the guy who stopped to shoot you, you respawn and stop to shoot the guy who stopped to shoot the guy who shot you...

It's just one big everyone-gets-kills-circle-jerk where everyone feels good about themselves and comes back next year to buy the next installment.

 

[The White Hunter]

Real rewards for objectives. Ghost Recon FS gives the team enemy positions, or EMPs the enemy if you take an objective. They could do with putting something like this in CoD or Battlefield so that players actually have a reason to work together towards objectives.

Black Ops 2 sort of fixed that, actually. They made it so that actually playing the objective is worth far more points than just camping and killing people. You can go 40/0 and be a god with bullets the whole game, but you won't get a fifth the points of someone who was out in the front capping points and doing stuff.

I get what you mean, though: making things less focused on just points as opposed to actual information and bonuses and whatnot. FEAR 1 did that really well - both teams had access to the bullet time powers, but the people in control of the objective and such got way more time dilation and power reserves than the other team.

YOu pretty much want the health system from Resistance: Fall of Man then? Good health system imo, 4 bits of health, you regen up to the nearest quarter but then need a med pack.

The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay did that. You got five blocks which regenerated quickly up to the nearest block (getting grazed by one bullet, for instance, would take off half a block, and the same would happen from getting hit with a knife once), and you could refill them at a medical station, which consisted of Riddick getting a needle the size of a baseball bat shoved into his neck. The atmosphere in that game was great.

More shooters need to be as good as Resistance: Fall of Man...

coughcoughResistance3coughcough

Anyway.

Partially regenerating health, no aiming down sights, and bots have all been said, but what I want to see is a complete redesign and rethinking of what guns shooters should have.

Namely, no automatic weapons short of gatling guns and LMGs.

There was a post I saw on the forums a long time ago about how stupid it was to even have assault rifles in a shooter, since they live up too well to their intention of being a middle ground. That is, you can shoot really far with a sniper rifle, but you can do effectively a similar thing with an assault rifle and pump out many more bullets. You can ambush people with shotguns, but you can do the same thing with an assault rifle and not have to worry about rate of fire. Not having assault rifles would also make having submachine guns less pointless, since submachine guns in games like CoD and its ilk are basically assault rifles but less accurate.

TF2 is a great example of this: almost every weapon in the game is a single-shot weapon, whether it's clip-based or not. Guns that are designed to pump out lots of bullets pump out LOTS of bullets, and there is no such thing as a gun that can do it all. Even the most well-rounded weapons have drawbacks like damage falloff, projectile speed, clip size, reload speed, etc.

It would also encourage more creativity in the weapon design. With CoD and Battlefield, the guns all really look the same, and it makes very little difference which one you use. Not to belabour a point, but in TF2, every single gun has a distinctive look and is easily identifiable at a distance. There's actual strategy in the combat: pyros with the default flamethrower and the space-age Phlogistinator, for instance, require massively different approaches.

Don't cough Resistance 3 at me I played the daylights out of that game and often parade it around as a shining beacon of it's genre and platform.

SMG's are poinltess in COD? Really!? Because I played Blops 2 and they seemed to be the most frustrating thing to deal with. That and the snipers in blops 2.

 

[Fumbles]

I think shooters need to become slower paced. That's why I love Arma so much - it is slow paced and tactical. It isn't linear.

Thank you. We need the tactical shooters back like Raven Shield/Rogue Spear, Ghost Recon 1, SWAT 3/4. It sucks that Bohemia is the only one making anything tactical and semi realistic now. Some of thse other ones gave you good close quarter tactical action too. (which the OFP/Arma games don't)

I guess all the kiddies they market these games to are too impatient for that style of play.

Checkout this http://serellan.com/

I had higher hopes for Ground Branch myself. Until I heard it had no proper campaign and was a mp only game.

Wasn't Serellan the dude who stole those pics and used them as 'concept art' ?

Sad that these seem to have been the only 2 new hopes for the genre outside of Bohemia's games. Even sadder that I cant run Arma 2, won't be able to run Arma 3 and don't have much interest in any other modern/high spec games (at least at this time) to justify upgrading just for 1 game.

Nope Serellan was a modder for Ghost Recon. He also did level design for various other games (Reach is the only one that comes to mind)

Apparently he wants to bring back the old school tac shooters with Takedown.

 

[riccyd]

Lasers that tear through the flesh and don't just incinerate or paint you with burn holes.

 

[ThisGuyLikesNoTacos]

Shooters as a genre is almost perfected in my eyes (expect a few adjustments here and there according to your preference). So what else is there? It's not like a shooter can work if it tries to have a meaningful story or...

Spoiler

Oh... Well... Do more that! That's something where video games still need more refining!

If that doesn't count I suppose you could make the guns have a lot more kick in them.

Also instead of making shooters ultra-realistic or ultra-unrealistic...

Spoiler

Why not both?

 

[m19]

I also decided there needs to be an about-face button. If someone is shooting at you from behind, you should be able to flip around and shoot back instead of taking the time to turn.

Can't say I agree with that. Being able to turn around fast and precise is a test of your skill. The game should not do this (or dodge for that matter) for you.

Also the sniper in BF3 is not easy to play effectively. Assault is by far the most efficient class for infantry combat.

 

[Something Amyss]

Well the one second death is a big part of MMS, making sure everyone just dies when sprayed down for the ultimate casual effect.

Yes, dying when shot is such a casual concept.

 

[kasperbbs]

Dragons!! I want a shooter where we hunt down mythical creatures like Chimera, drakes, dragons, blah blah...

There is such a game. It's called "Legendary" and it's horrible.

I can't really think of anything, thats probably because i was satisfied with what UT, Half-Life 2 had to offer. I would rather get rid of some features like cutscenes and quicktime events. I just recently finished FC3 and the final boss fight if you can call it that was simply pathetic, suddenly all of the environments were gone and the guy started ranting, then i died while watching it, apparently i had to click a button to win.

 

[TK421]

Mother-flippin' BOTS.

Every shooter should have bots. Bar none. No excuses. Even if the online multiplayer never takes off, or dies in 6 months... if your game has bots then your multiplayer/instant action/challenge modes will never go to waste, and can live forever.

[HEADING=1]Yes.[/HEADING] I still play Perfect Dark. On the N64. Bots are the best thing ever to happen to video games. More shooters need bots. I don't know how many times I was playing a shooter with just one friend and we wanted to be on the same team, but couldn't because there weren't bots.

Can't say I agree with that. Being able to turn around fast and precise is a test of your skill. The game should not do this (or dodge for that matter) for you.

Also the sniper in BF3 is not easy to play effectively. Assault is by far the most efficient class for infantry combat.

I completely agree. A game shouldn't hold your hand when it comes to things that should take skill. Plus, dodges always piss me off, no matter what kind of game they're in.

 

[Kopikatsu]

SMG's are poinltess in COD? Really!? Because I played Blops 2 and they seemed to be the most frustrating thing to deal with. That and the snipers in blops 2.

SMGs got a blanket nerf a week or two ago, with some being nerfed even further than that. Assault Rifles got minor recoil nerfs, but also accuracy buffs so they're better at long range with controlled bursts. Also, some handguns and the basic Shotgun were nerfed.

No Executioner buff though, which is really sad because it REALLY needs buffs.

 

[scorptatious]

Lets see here...

People complaining about regenerating health? Check.

People complaining about realism? Check.

People complaining about aiming down sights? Check. (Seriously, I have no idea what the big issue is)

People talking about how shooters and games are "dumbed down"? Check.

People using that obnoxious term coined by Yahtzee? Check.

I guess the only thing I can say that contributes to this thread would be to have a shooter like Metal Arms: Glitch in the System again. That game was fun.

Also instead of making shooters ultra-realistic or ultra-unrealistic...

Spoiler

Why not both?

 

[Fumbles]

Wasn't Serellan the dude who stole those pics and used them as 'concept art' ?

Nope

Do some research on his kickstarter project.

I have, and I haven't seen any "stolen concept art" controversy. Can I get a link if there was?

 

[The White Hunter]

SMG's are poinltess in COD? Really!? Because I played Blops 2 and they seemed to be the most frustrating thing to deal with. That and the snipers in blops 2.

SMGs got a blanket nerf a week or two ago, with some being nerfed even further than that. Assault Rifles got minor recoil nerfs, but also accuracy buffs so they're better at long range with controlled bursts. Also, some handguns and the basic Shotgun were nerfed.

No Executioner buff though, which is really sad because it REALLY needs buffs.

Ehhhh I still can't be bothered with it's run and gun shenanigins online. Fun split-screen with bots though, and campaign was really good too.

 

[Sewa_Yunga]

Just make more Vanquish.

The world needs more Vanquish.

Argh, my to-play list just got a +1... Totally forgot about this game!

Also:

-I wanna hold weapons, not one, especially not 2, I need. more. guns.

The first thing that came to my mind was "more guns, more diversity in guns".
Then I dug up Turok and Turok 2 and started playing them again.
Now that I'm back, I realized that those two games have something I rarely see in modern shooters:
When you turn around, your vision doesn't just turn like it was mounted on a tripod. You actually sway a little, tilting your FoV to the side as you turn. I find myself way deeper immersed in these games because of this little feature.

On a side note, I think it's time to look how much StarForge[footnote]I guess it could be described as Minecraft (or Tekkit) meets Aliens meets Hero Defense.

Spoiler: Excerpt from the Starforge Very Early Alpha 0.1 readme:

What is StarForge?

StarForge is a game about gathering resources, building bases, crafting anything you want, and surviving on an alien planet.[...]

StarForge was inspired by Halo, Warcraft 3, Borderlands, Terraria, and Minecraft. It borrows elements from the RTS, FPS, RPG, Voxel Builder, Tower Defense, and Physics Sandbox genres.

[/footnote] has progressed since I last played it.

Edit: Woot, I just found out that it has been greenlit on Steam. And now it has more weapons. Gloriously ridiculous weapons. Ridiculously glorious weapons.

Spoiler: Look at them!

I have no idea how to insert a timecode to end a video at a certain time, so feel free to press pause whenever you like
Edit: Turns out, I also had the wrong idea of how to insert the timecode for starting the video at a certain time into the [youtube] tag... So, the part I wanted to show you starts at 1:46
Edit2: aparrently it's "&start=xxx", not "&time=xxx"

I want to play this game, NAO!

So yes, shooters definitely need more weapons nowadays.

 

[Professor Lupin Madblood]

Don't cough Resistance 3 at me I played the daylights out of that game and often parade it around as a shining beacon of it's genre and platform.

SMG's are poinltess in COD? Really!? Because I played Blops 2 and they seemed to be the most frustrating thing to deal with. That and the snipers in blops 2.

Well you didn't mention Resistance 3, so I thought you were one of those insufferable people who think that Fall of Man was the high point of the Resistance series, presumably because they're more afraid of change than the Republican party.

Anywho, what I meant by my comments on SMGs and the like is that they're pointless from a design standpoint, not that they aren't effective in the game. SMGs and assault rifles are both fully automatic guns that fire at similar rates and take about the same time to reload, with the only significant difference being that SMGs are less accurate and worse at range. At that point, the game isn't being designed as a game so much as a simulation of reality, yet it still takes far too many liberties to be considered as anything but fiction.

 

[JagermanXcell]

Also, voice menus, especially in console games. It allows you to do a lot with the flavour of the world and/or character models/character classes, and it lets people actually communicate with one another.

Something That I think would be really cool is a first person shooter which also lets you build your own base of operations.

IT could be a little like Minecraft where you place down blocks and such to make your own fortifications, and while you'd get points for shooting the enemy, you'd get even more for coming up with elaborate traps to kill them.

From what I've seen of it, Natural Selection 2 sort of has that. One person acts as commander, playing the game as an RTS-type deal, where the other players on your team are the units. You can set rally points, put down structures which players can help build faster, that sort of thing.

-Shooters with beautiful and engaging settings/environments... sooooo more Bioshock/ Bioshock Infinite games!
-I wanna hold weapons, not one, especially not 2, I need. more. guns.
-More tactical focused multiplayer that, revolves around clever thinking, teamwork, and reward for using these smarts and whatever you have at your disposal... instead of the multiplayer we actually have...
aaaaaaand-
Jetpacks aka screw realism. Its for the weak.

Resistance 3 actually had some starkly beautiful locations (New York with snow drifts ten metres tall, or a quaint little village in the Scottish highlands) for its multiplayer, and it encouraged people to think more the better they did. You'd start out with one or two weapons, for instance, and whenever you killed somebody, you'd be able to pick up what they were holding. You could begin life as a run-and-gun shotgunner and end up with an electric flamethrower, an ice flamethrower, a gun that shot disease and a machine gun capable of shooting around corners.

The Uncharted games, though curtailing the number of guns you could carry, also encouraged this arcade-y style of play since pretty much every gun in the game would spawn on a map at one point or another, and players could climb all over buildings and whatnot. The maps were beautiful and well-designed, too, and not many shooters let you play in frickin' Shangri-La.

Yeah I've played Uncharted and yes the locals in all 3 games are beautiful and colorful. And my want for guns was a bit vague, so let me re-itterate:
I want to hold more then 2 guns.
I want realism thrown out the window so I can decide wether the spider shooting machine gun or the child launching rocket launcher is right for the situation or I can pick one of the other creative guns in my inventory of lets say 8 guns. All in a backpack, because I really miss the Doom days.