Hardcore Griping

[Count_de_Monet]

Well shit, I just lost a thesis length post about what is bothering me in the gaming industry because I was too lazy to pull up OpenOffice... Well, here is the short version:

We need more advanced hitboxes not realistic water and perfectly rendered foliage. I'm tired of only taking four types of damage (arms, legs, torso and head) or only two (whole body and head). CoD4 seems to have forgotten that being shot in the left big toe shouldn't disable you quite as much as being shot in the left lung. Crysis believes that kevlar can stop an entire clip of 7.62 ammunition and still leave the wearer able to stand. Please, I beg of you oh lords of the gaming world, can we stop with "Life" and "Armor" bars? This isn't Final Fantasy and I don't think my well being needs to be represented by a number at or less than 100 (I'm staring directly at you Valve).

RTS's are making leaps forward but too many are boring me to tears. Company of Heroes is so quickly paced and thought-necessary that it makes Command and Conquer 3 feel like the movie Pearl Harbor (a long, boring, shitty movie with some shiny objects to keep your brain from fully realizing it's craptacularness). Cover, paying attention to the direction you need to face, specialized units, squad based combat, and command powers are all things which have catapulted Company of Heroes into the limelight. Yet every battle in C&C3 turns into a tankfest as each player pumps out one, maybe two, different units.

I'm less familiar with RPG's since I haven't owned a console in a long time yet I feel qualified to comment on them because I played the travesty that was Oblivion. Things which made Oblivion suck: A main quest that could only be completed by a heavy armor warrior, Oblivion gates which lead you to practically the same stupid lava world with the same four bad guys populating it, cities inhabited by twelve people with boring or a complete lack of side quests, dungeons that were the same maze except one had stone skinning and the other had dirt skinning, and (in my opinion) a lack of cool shit you can collect. Am I the only person who enjoyed the Mage's and Warrior Guild's quests more than the main quest (which I couldn't even bring myself to finish)?!

Oh, and don't even get me started on MMO's. The MMORPG has never had anything resembling immersion in the atmosphere. The only people I've ever known to put the RPG into MMORPG are the ubernerds who type in appropriate speech, only respond to their in-game name, and write fan fiction about their exploits. Everquest 2 and World of Warcraft took a promising MMORPG landscape and turned it into a cheap grind-whore with less than thrilling accomplishments. Guild Wars managed a fair amount of immersion because it actually had a storyline but it was so poorly written and, well, poorly written that I only barely cared.

That's it, I'm not even going to pre-read it because that is what got my last post deleted.

 

[squirrelman42]

Hitboxes in Goldeneye were amazing. Everything since: crap.

 

[PurpleRain]

I would have to agree with most of your points. Stranglehold had some great hitboxes: groins, left eye, right eye, etc. The game's always better when you can watch your foe fall to the floor grabbing his non-existant crotch.

 

[Lightbulb]

*shrug*

Yeah and?

Or to put a positive spin on things: Yes i broadly agree with the thrust of your argument but differ in details.

For example CoH - MICRO. Its not an RTS its a:
How-quick-can-you-click-and-multi-task-in-realtime-game

It was good fun but i want games to move AWAY from micro...

 

[Damn Dirty Ape]

I honestly don't get what's so great about coh. I admit I was drawn in the first week with the pretty graphics, but there is no immersion when historical realism is brushed aside like a fly on my sandwhich to give micro the upperhand.

As to the original point, yes the health and armor system could be innovated. But how? So far the latest innovation has been to do away with it all together and use the halo regeneration system. The only real game that used this somewhat in a more cool way was deus ex, where you had to crawl when your legs got shot to pieces. If you've seen the far cry 2 previews, there are trying something somewhat new with you picking a prying the actuall bulle that hit you from your hand or other bodily part. Looks entertaining, but again how many bullets can one pry from it's hand before there is any actual hand left?

It's easy to complain but hard to think up a proper system that feels more real. I'm not sure if anybody here played vietcong but that game had it pretty much nailed. Kill them before they kill you, bullets hurt like hell and you sure as hell had to call a medic if you were hit. Even then your health would be portion lower then your original, indicating you were wounded. ( the amount of health you got back after the healing would depend on the difficulty setting, meaning with realistic settings you barely got any back )

 

[dan_the_manatee]

If we add enough realism into the FPS genre, they'll be unplayable. One bullet deaths are going to lead to some pretty short firefights and a lot of reloading.
The hit box thing I agree with. That's probably just a symptom of everyone using ragdoll physics, rather than individual animations (like goldeneye did). Assassin's Creed had some good animation in that respect, but it was all preanimated rather than enitrely player controlled. I'd like to see more agnised screaming, but I should imagine for a number of games, they'd fall foul of censors if they coupled better hitboxes and animations.

 

[sammyfreak]

I think that somes games should be like that, but it would be horribly lame if all games were. The more variation in the game industry the better.

 

[Razzle Bathbone]

Hitboxes?

Seriously? You want more detailed hitboxes and THAT'S what will make a game interesting for you?

How about good writing, characters we can care about, and clever new challenges to overcome? We don't need no stinkin' hitboxes.

 

[DrmChsr0]

He wants crotchshots?

well there's always waiting for Fallout 3...

 

[JakubK666]

Hitboxes?

Seriously? You want more detailed hitboxes and THAT'S what will make a game interesting for you?

How about good writing, characters we can care about, and clever new challenges to overcome? We don't need no stinkin' hitboxes.

How many times did you see all those three things put together in one FPS? Developers proved that they can't do it mostly due to American/Console Tards.

Devs can't do that so all they ever do is make clones of clones with better graphics and ***** about the new standards they had set for the video gaming industry.

Take a look at Crysis. While the graphics are about five years ahead of other games it's the same game that you already bought three years ago when Far Cry was released.

 

[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

How many times did you see all those three things put together in one FPS? Developers proved that they can't do it mostly due to American/Console Tards.

Devs can't do that so all they ever do is make clones of clones with better graphics and ***** about the new standards they had set for the video gaming industry.

Take a look at Crysis. While the graphics are about five years ahead of other games it's the same game that you already bought three years ago when Far Cry was released.

Wait, are you saying Americans are stupider than other gamers? Or am I just misinterpreting you throwing Americans in with the "console tards"?

 

[Count_de_Monet]

For example CoH - MICRO. Its not an RTS its a:
How-quick-can-you-click-and-multi-task-in-realtime-game

It was good fun but i want games to move AWAY from micro...

I think we can expect both micro and macro RTS's and I don't really have a problem with either. For example, I loved Supreme Commander because the complexity of button mashing was replaced with having to pay attention to a larger scale battlefield. C&C:Generals had a perfect mix of micro and macro in my opinion; there were plenty of larger maps, plenty of commander abilities and units that attacked at different ranges, heights, speeds, etc. I may have loved Warcraft and Starcraft during their time but compared to CoH, Supreme Commander, and C&C: Generals they seem boring and stale.

As to the original point, yes the health and armor system could be innovated. But how? So far the latest innovation has been to do away with it all together and use the halo regeneration system. The only real game that used this somewhat in a more cool way was deus ex, where you had to crawl when your legs got shot to pieces. If you've seen the far cry 2 previews, there are trying something somewhat new with you picking a prying the actuall bulle that hit you from your hand or other bodily part. Looks entertaining, but again how many bullets can one pry from it's hand before there is any actual hand left?

I wouldn't criticize unless I had ideas on how to fix it. I always enjoyed the injury system in Rainbow Six, as you took more damage it became more and more difficult to move around so eventually you were just a bloody mess that dragged one foot and could barely turn around. Make a player move more slowly if they are shot in the legs, make tracking more difficult if they are hit in the arms, and there is always sight obstruction as you get more injured like Call of Duty. Include body armor like in Vegas so that you can choose to be completely decked out and move more slowly or mostly free of it and move more quickly. Then take less damage if you are hit on your armor and more if bullets miss it and hit your body. There are just so many options and most of them are in one game or another that it's just lazy for a game to completely ignore them.

If we add enough realism into the FPS genre, they'll be unplayable. One bullet deaths are going to lead to some pretty short firefights and a lot of reloading.

I doubt one bullet deaths really happen in real life with as much frequency as you seem to believe. Even if you are hit in the stomache, arm, leg, whatever you don't die instantly though you are certainly injured. I doubt we are at a point where a game could give you an anatomically correct body so a shot to an artery kills you more quickly than a shot to the stomach but a little more realism wouldn't hurt. Injuries, bleeding out, and how both effect your control over your avatar would add a whole new dimension of play to a game. At the very least I wouldn't have to suffer the morons who intentionally rush into a group of enemies because they have the Martyr perk on...

Hitboxes?

Seriously? You want more detailed hitboxes and THAT'S what will make a game interesting for you?

How about good writing, characters we can care about, and clever new challenges to overcome? We don't need no stinkin' hitboxes.

Ultimately all of my interest in an FPS boils down to the online play. I would always love to have a better story and characters in the campaign but for every hour I spend on an FPS's campaign I'll spend ten, twenty or a hundred playing online. So yes, more interesting bullet-to-body interaction would make games better in my opinion.

 

[JakubK666]

Wait, are you saying Americans are stupider than other gamers? Or am I just misinterpreting you throwing Americans in with the "console tards"?

Lets just put it this way "The gaming industry and the game quality would be a lot different if it wasn't for American Audience." If you want a proof just compare JRPG's to RPG's.

With all respect, average Americans(also mistakenly known as "The fans/The audience" by stupid developers such as EA) aren't particularly selective about the games they play, which results in the cloning of the clones that I have already mentioned. I don't remember the source but I believe that Activision or Ubi actually mentioned that they prefer European devs as they have a more personal touch towards their products and each of their games is fine tuned...unlike some developers (I'm talking to you, EA bastards!)

 

[propertyofcobra]

Wait, are you saying Americans are stupider than other gamers? Or am I just misinterpreting you throwing Americans in with the "console tards"?

Lets just put it this way "The gaming industry and the game quality would be a lot different if it wasn't for American Audience." If you want a proof just compare JRPG's to RPG's.

With all respect, average Americans(also mistakenly known as "The fans/The audience" by stupid developers such as EA) aren't particularly selective about the games they play, which results in the cloning of the clones that I have already mentioned. I don't remember the source but I believe that Activision or Ubi actually mentioned that they prefer European devs as they have a more personal touch towards their products and each of their games is fine tuned...unlike some developers (I'm talking to you, EA bastards!)

Really? RPGs versus JRPGs? Freedom and deep characters, unique settings and wonderful combat versus...penis-compensating swords, angst and linearity above all else.

 

[JakubK666]

Really? RPGs versus JRPGs? Freedom and deep characters, unique settings and wonderful combat versus...penis-compensating swords, angst and linearity above all else.

Yeah that was an example of how different RPG's can be if you don't give a shit about the rest of the world and make a game that fit your own audience and has it's own rules instead of making a dumbed down generalized piece of crap that everybody including your mum can play.

PS: I'm not implying any specific game, not even a specific genre so don't start flaming me about Oblivion not being a piece of crap etc. (although the idea of releasing such an advanced RPG on Consoles is generalized and dumbed down.)

 

[KurtNiisan]

The game's always better when you can watch your foe fall to the floor grabbing his non-existant crotch.

- That comment made me instantly think of the areas where you play as Kai in "Heavenly Sword". Firing arrows into guys hands to make them drop weapons and into their asses and crotches brings forth a certain level of.. satisfaction ^^

 

[REDPill357]

How about good writing, characters we can care about, and clever new challenges to overcome? We don't need no stinkin' hitboxes.

How many times did you see all those three things put together in one FPS? Developers proved that they can't do it mostly due to American/Console Tards.

How many times must I say this: Half-Life 2.

Also, directed to the hitbox question: I'm surprised no one has yet mentioned Soldier of Fortune. I think the hit zones in each body in the first one was around 26.

 

[Fire Daemon]

How many times did you see all those three things put together in one FPS? Developers proved that they can't do it mostly due to American/Console Tards.

Devs can't do that so all they ever do is make clones of clones with better graphics and ***** about the new standards they had set for the video gaming industry.

Take a look at Crysis. While the graphics are about five years ahead of other games it's the same game that you already bought three years ago when Far Cry was released.

Wait, are you saying Americans are stupider than other gamers? Or am I just misinterpreting you throwing Americans in with the "console tards"?

He's saying Americans and anyone who plays a game on a console are either physically or mentally Retarded. I'm suprised at the amount of idiotic PC fanboys we have here.



Ahhh the crotch shot. It made golden eye that little bit special.

 

[CurveSurfer]

Game revenue is close to taking over movie revenue.

Big money has been involved in recent years.

Tell me, what was the last great film you saw - that's right ..... is all pandering to the common denominator.

Sounds to me that the OP want's art and fulfillment combined with a bit of blowing up stuff.

Am sorry, but this day and age you arn't going to get groundbreaking stuff - hard to finance.

 

[Copter400]

MMO's are immersive. They offer you something no other game can offer you: a world full of living people, like yourself.

Also, out of interest, would you enjoy a game that offered realistic hitboxes but terrible graphics?