Modern trends in FPS I do not care for

[Fiz_The_Toaster]

You've just stated almost every single problem I have with most shooters, and why I hardly play them. I always thought the regenerating health things was rather stupid and it felt unnatural to me, exactly why do I have to hide behind a couch to get the red out of my screen.

I'd love to play a good long shooter where the story makes sense and I'm not being bossed around by the squad leader like I'm their *****, and I only do it to drive the story along. You do make some good points that I never thought of though, or even bothered to since I was too busy being bored playing the game.

I have found that the developers do put in game modes for the different players. Like, you don't like the red jelly on the screen? Play Hardcore mode where 1-2 shots kill you. Halo with shields off. Regenerating health is a streamline mechanic and running around grabbing health packs is almost equally ridiculous. I always enjoyed shooters that rewarded the player that had the skills that would reward them in a real life combat situation. Fast reflexes and steady aim. I like the games that require you to listen to footsteps, not make your own, predict the movement of the enemy and react quickly when they come into view.

The MW2s and clones reward mastering their aim-bot mechanics more than anything. I love hardcore mode because when I am on fire, nothing can stop me because I can just shoot that much faster. Too many times if I play regular mode in MW2 do I get the first shots off, hit them square in the chest but they squeeze off a burst and drop to the ground and finish me before that 5th bullet could hit. That just frustrates me. First shot fired and hit should be the one who wins the confrontation because that is how it is. I feel like its more like shooting with rubber bullets and a test of whoever can stand up the longest.

^^This is all for multiplayer. I can suspend my belief better for single player. I don't mind if enemies can take a couple extra shots, that's why I put it on a higher difficulty.

I almost never play multiplayer when it comes to shooters, except for Borderlands, I do understand why developers do those certain things, because it works and people love it. I'm not knocking them for making that game style more tactical and squad based, I'm just not interested in them. I don't like Halo so I can't speak for that game, but as for COD, I can only play so much of a realistic shooter before I get turned off by it.

I've played MW2 on veteran only for the challenge and nothing more. I suppose the only reason I don't play multiplayer is because I don't play shooters all the time so my reflexes aren't that great until I play it long enough to where I'm pretty good at it, but normally I'm at that point where I want to play something different. Some people, like yourself, love those things about the genre, so I'm not gonna bash it for that. In my humble opinion, the red jelly thing to me is just silly and weird, but I guess that's just a personal gripe.

 

[Laser Priest]

1. Health. Vs Regen. I really hate regen. No matter what game it is all strategy goes out the window and becomes POP UP take out 1 or more baddies while taking damage POP DOWN and wait, repeat. Health makes you accountable for your actions, tense, and makes you think. I am all for hybrid systems. Have a shield that protects a few shots with a nonregen health below. Or health regens to a certain level so your never near zero. Awesome, go for it, but regen still turns all game play into a boring popup cover shooter.

Only if you play that way. The mixture is best, but having a small bit of health that regenerates makes it easier for developers to design battles as they know exactly how much health you'll be going into a battle with. It might not be the best system, but it certainly makes development easier and gives you less chance to get caught in bullshit situations such as a massive firefight with no healing items and low health.

2. Length, games are too freaking short. I look forward to the day when COD does not have a single player campaign. When they finally drop the pretext and token effort and just make a multiplayer game, put in some bots and challenges for singleplayers if you must. This worked with unreal tournament 10 years ago, its a viable strategy. I personally like single player campaigns more and would LOVE a distinct split. Make multi only games and single only games and put your effort into that. I want a 20 hour campaign. Keep the 5 hour crap. If it was 20 hours with replay value and multiple play style options I might just buy it instead of gamefly.

This I will agree with you on. I think Call of Duty's raging success convinced developers that a short campaign and a multiplayer focus is the way to go. I still would love to see games that last much longer. It seems RPGs are the place to go for that now.

3. Story, Im going to skirt tenuously close to the Half life debate here so bear with me. Spoiler alert as well. In half life near the start you have spent hours trying to get to the surface. The scientists have been talking about rumors of the military coming to rescue you all in your fight against mysterious aliens. You enter a room on a catwalk and see 2 soldiers! You are saved! A scientist yells ?Thank God youre here!? and the soldiers brutally gun him down. Thats it. You can surmise that its cover up time and your about to be covered up. Theres no cut scene spelling it out in detail the decisions back in Washington, you know what your character knows, nothing more. Later in the game black ops assassins show up and start taking out the soldiers! Height of irony, now their being covered up too. How much worse have things gotten? Someone high up is freaking out to the point that they dont trust the regular military! Compare this to a recent story telling event in COD:BO. I torture a person violently till they give me some bullet points for the plot, hand them a gun and their on my side now, the guy I just tortured, WTF. WTF, well glad hes not made about the whole insane pain thing. Now its not always necessary to keep just your characters perspective, and knowing plot beyond them can be good, but the modern fps isnt really doing a great job here.

I have to say that Half-Life is probably a bad comparison point here. Half Life has always had a great method of story telling in my opinion. Especially compared to CoD. Especially Treyarch. But other shooters have a decent story. Once again, I think Call of Duty's success promoted the action-over-story design.

4. Smart AI. A lot of review laud the smart AI in fpss like ?they use grenades to flush you out, they flank you?. I think this is a growing symptom of the health regen reducing things to cover/popup shooters. Smart AI really means, you have to switch cover occasionally or theyll get you. 12+ years ago there were smart enemies, they never stayed in the same cover, they flanked you, if you stay in same place they grenade launch your ass. On that point, they like you had grenade launchers on their rifles AND THEY USED THEM. This is all probably a problem with the idea of smart AI. We want challenging enemies not smart. Imagine a game with you vs 100+ actual players coordinating with each other in a single player setting. You would stand no chance at all and it wouldnt be fun.

All right, smart ain't easy to program. And smart generally contributes to the challenge. Believe me, we are far from truly intelligent AI.

5. Carrying 2 weapons. So you can carry only 2 pistols, but you can carry a m60 with ammo and a rocket launcher. I call shenanigans. Especially when my character model has a FREAKING PISTOL HOLSTER ON IT. At least have pistol +2 others?.This is a weird contention point because I know its silly to carry 12 different guns. Grid based and weight based are good systems but take away from the fps experience with the management factor. I kinda like the one of each style, one long gun one rocket/special one pistol one smg sized. I dont know what I like best here, but its defiantly not 2 guns PERIOD. I wanna save my shotty for when I need it dammit. Having different guns for different situations is fun. A lot of 2 gun games know this and but areas with a bunch of guns before big fights so you can choose. Why not just let me take more then game?

I have to say I like the games such as Gears of War that allow you to carry one weapon of multiple classes.

6. Varied gameplay. Fighting of zombies for a few hours with limited ammo and a crowbar, fighting soldiers and aliens, fighting just aliens in another dimension, occasional puzzle, pseudo stealth section, exploration, platforming. Dont get me wrong I like the token stealth level in COD, though its getting more ?follow some dude while he talks? unchallenging with each game. Otherwise shooters are just firefight, walk firefight. There has to be something fun to do between fights that developers can think of.

This just goes with the setting of most games. I'm not exactly sure how people would react if you were fighting Russians in Call of Duty then out of nowhere you're fighting ogres and other assorted shit. At least Halo gave us a switch between Aliens and Zombie Aliens.

I hope my randomly telling you my opinions has helped you with... Something.

 

[bombadilillo]

Regenerating health smooths the gameplay, where in health bars, you're forced to stop and go on a retarded scavenger hunt for a bottle of pills that restores limbs.

Otherwise I agree with you.

But don't you DARE saying limited ammo makes a game better. It doesn't make you think, it doesn't make it tense, it makes you whip you're controller through the TV because you don't have enough rockets to kill the tank that you can't get past otherwise.

The alterantive of magicly restoring limbs that heal on there own makes damage mean nothing. And limited ammo should not come into play in a boss fight. If theres something big around have enough ammo to kill it around too. Maybe make the player run from building to building to get it, but thats a gamebreaking flaw to not have enough in a boss scenario.

 

[artanis_neravar]

snip

I agree complete with all of these, and the only thing I would add is stop making games for console and porting them to the PC. Either do it the other way around or have a separate team for the PC versions

 

[bombadilillo]

Yes, while its obviously not a fps dragon Age was supposed to be very different control wise and therefore gameplay wise between the console and pc versions. I played Crysis 2 on ps3 and it felt very different then Crysis on PC, was this just the change to the sequal or did the PC version suffer? Anyone who played PC version ring in please.

 

[Nieroshai]

Can't argue with you there. There are people who love the cover-based style because it feels less gimmicky to them in particular than stomping on a first aid kit or eating a ration mid-battle and suddenly feeling like you just got out of the hot tub. Overall I agree though.

 

[artanis_neravar]

Yes, while its obviously not a fps dragon Age was supposed to be very different control wise and therefore gameplay wise between the console and pc versions. I played Crysis 2 on ps3 and it felt very different then Crysis on PC, was this just the change to the sequal or did the PC version suffer? Anyone who played PC version ring in please.

The PC version suffered in that the only display options we could change were screen size, anti-ailising, and vertical sync

 

[bombadilillo]

If you want cover based, then go 3rd person. I don't particularly like it there either myself but at least its more servicable. And if thats the main point, to sit there and popup then sure have some regen, goes with the theme. I just find that boring.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

1. Health. Vs Regen. I really hate regen. No matter what game it is all strategy goes out the window and becomes POP UP take out 1 or more baddies while taking damage POP DOWN and wait, repeat. Health makes you accountable for your actions, tense, and makes you think. I am all for hybrid systems. Have a shield that protects a few shots with a nonregen health below. Or health regens to a certain level so your never near zero. Awesome, go for it, but regen still turns all game play into a boring popup cover shooter.

Health regeneration means that combat in the game is primarily a game of resource management. While this is all well and good it forces a very conservative style of play that is anathema to high action. In order to get around this for epic set piece battles, game designers are forced to drop huge caches of health and ammunition. This effectively means you are using health regeneration but adding an unnecessary step to the process. The bottom line is if you want an "adrenaline fueled action game" you cannot have players constantly rooting around in corners looking for scraps of health. More importantly, you cannot have a game design that fundamentally forces players to play as slowly and carefully as possible.

Thus regenerating health is not, itself, a problem. It is simply indicative of a trend in modern video games where the focus is on the moment to moment action rather than on exploration and puzzle solving. If a game is going to use non regenerating health, the basic design of the game must encourage exploration. For an example, note that the best examples of the "old style" approached level design not as a well disguised corridor but rather as a maze.

2. Length, games are too freaking short. I look forward to the day when COD does not have a single player campaign. When they finally drop the pretext and token effort and just make a multiplayer game, put in some bots and challenges for singleplayers if you must. This worked with unreal tournament 10 years ago, its a viable strategy. I personally like single player campaigns more and would LOVE a distinct split. Make multi only games and single only games and put your effort into that. I want a 20 hour campaign. Keep the 5 hour crap. If it was 20 hours with replay value and multiple play style options I might just buy it instead of gamefly.

Modern games require a much greater investment to produce any given segment of gameplay. Games are short not because they hate the player but rather because they want to ship the game in a reasonable span of time at a cost that can be overcome and a profit turned. If you want to complain about this, then complain about the fact that gamers have two desires that directly conflict: that a game look great and that a game be incredibly long and deep.

3. Story, Im going to skirt tenuously close to the Half life debate here so bear with me. Spoiler alert as well. In half life near the start you have spent hours trying to get to the surface. The scientists have been talking about rumors of the military coming to rescue you all in your fight against mysterious aliens. You enter a room on a catwalk and see 2 soldiers! You are saved! A scientist yells ?Thank God youre here!? and the soldiers brutally gun him down. Thats it. You can surmise that its cover up time and your about to be covered up. Theres no cut scene spelling it out in detail the decisions back in Washington, you know what your character knows, nothing more. Later in the game black ops assassins show up and start taking out the soldiers! Height of irony, now their being covered up too. How much worse have things gotten? Someone high up is freaking out to the point that they dont trust the regular military! Compare this to a recent story telling event in COD:BO. I torture a person violently till they give me some bullet points for the plot, hand them a gun and their on my side now, the guy I just tortured, WTF. WTF, well glad hes not made about the whole insane pain thing. Now its not always necessary to keep just your characters perspective, and knowing plot beyond them can be good, but the modern fps isnt really doing a great job here.

Telling a story is a difficult thing especially when your primary mechanism of interaction with the world is "shooting stuff". One could build the story into the world in subtle ways but this often means players can completely miss the fact that there even was a story. They can be more direct but this is only useful if the game is designed to encourage exploration. Or they can rely on cutscenes which keep exposition happily divorced from gameplay. The latter is, by far, the simplest way to present a story.

4. Smart AI. A lot of review laud the smart AI in fpss like ?they use grenades to flush you out, they flank you?. I think this is a growing symptom of the health regen reducing things to cover/popup shooters. Smart AI really means, you have to switch cover occasionally or theyll get you. 12+ years ago there were smart enemies, they never stayed in the same cover, they flanked you, if you stay in same place they grenade launch your ass. On that point, they like you had grenade launchers on their rifles AND THEY USED THEM. This is all probably a problem with the idea of smart AI. We want challenging enemies not smart. Imagine a game with you vs 100+ actual players coordinating with each other in a single player setting. You would stand no chance at all and it wouldnt be fun.

Smart AI is both incredibly difficult to develop and exceedingly expensive in terms of computations. Thus why most games rely on a combination of scripting and deterministic AI. It isn't any smarter than the designer who built the map. Better AI is always possible, but no one wants to sacrifice all that computing power to do so. Beyond that there is often a question of if better AI would solve a problem and the answer in most cases is no. AI is suited for games like Halo which is built as a linear sandbox. Most modern FPS are carefully crafted and controlled and thus better AI simply serves no purpose.

5. Carrying 2 weapons. So you can carry only 2 pistols, but you can carry a m60 with ammo and a rocket launcher. I call shenanigans. Especially when my character model has a FREAKING PISTOL HOLSTER ON IT. At least have pistol +2 others?.This is a weird contention point because I know its silly to carry 12 different guns. Grid based and weight based are good systems but take away from the fps experience with the management factor. I kinda like the one of each style, one long gun one rocket/special one pistol one smg sized. I dont know what I like best here, but its defiantly not 2 guns PERIOD. I wanna save my shotty for when I need it dammit. Having different guns for different situations is fun. A lot of 2 gun games know this and but areas with a bunch of guns before big fights so you can choose. Why not just let me take more then game?

This is never really been a problem of realism so much as a limitation of the controller. Simply put there is no good way to switch between a large number of weapons. The difficulty of performing a simple weapon swap increases as the number of weapons a player can carry at any given moment increases.

6. Varied gameplay. Fighting of zombies for a few hours with limited ammo and a crowbar, fighting soldiers and aliens, fighting just aliens in another dimension, occasional puzzle, pseudo stealth section, exploration, platforming. Dont get me wrong I like the token stealth level in COD, though its getting more ?follow some dude while he talks? unchallenging with each game. Otherwise shooters are just firefight, walk firefight. There has to be something fun to do between fights that developers can think of.

Again, this isn't a question of what can be done. It is simply that people have overwhelmingly demonstrated that they love linear FPS games that are packed with action. Most of the problems on your list are the result of simply giving people something, noticing that they bought it and giving them an iteration of the same in the future.

 

[Doctor Glocktor]

Regenerating health smooths the gameplay, where in health bars, you're forced to stop and go on a retarded scavenger hunt for a bottle of pills that restores limbs.

Otherwise I agree with you.

But don't you DARE saying limited ammo makes a game better. It doesn't make you think, it doesn't make it tense, it makes you whip you're controller through the TV because you don't have enough rockets to kill the tank that you can't get past otherwise.

The alterantive of magicly restoring limbs that heal on there own makes damage mean nothing. And limited ammo should not come into play in a boss fight. If theres something big around have enough ammo to kill it around too. Maybe make the player run from building to building to get it, but thats a gamebreaking flaw to not have enough in a boss scenario.

Ultimately, I find regenerating health to be more enjoyable. Nothing breaks the immersion more to me then having to leave the firefight to find a health pack hidden in a crate around the level, instead of biding my time behind cover.

Limited ammo should not come into play at all, ever. Its a forced bottleneck to slow players down and force them to play the game longer.

 

[Veldt Falsetto]

Go play the Metroid Prime Trilogy you will see.

But the Metroid Prime Trilogy is less of a shooter and more of an adventure game that happens to be in first person and has a gun. It really, really isn't a shooter, so first person shooters really, really can't be compared to it.

Not all FPS has to be linear and isn't the main gameplay of Metroid Prime shooting in first person?

Don't make me go overboard and explain how Pokemon Snap is an FPS, please don't make me!

 

[Veldt Falsetto]

Go play the Metroid Prime Trilogy you will see.

But the Metroid Prime Trilogy is less of a shooter and more of an adventure game that happens to be in first person and has a gun. It really, really isn't a shooter, so first person shooters really, really can't be compared to it.

Not all FPS has to be linear and isn't the main gameplay of Metroid Prime shooting in first person?

Don't make me go overboard and explain how Pokemon Snap is an FPS, please don't make me!

No, the main gameplay of Metroid Prime, and in fact any Metroid game worth its salt, is exploration. Looking in every single nook and cranny of every single part of the world for every single little goody in the world; this (and Castlevania) is where the term "Metroidvania" came from. Shooting is a huge part of the game, sure, but it is not the main point. If it had been a first person shooter, it would have had a dual analog control scheme instead of the lock on. And don't mention the Wii's bastardization of the controls! Even if you prefer the Wii controls (which despite my last comment I don't care) you have to realize that it originally relied on a lock on.

EDIT: Also, you're right in that not all shooters need to be linear. And I never played Pokemon Snap.

I'm sure that other FPS games have a big focus on exploration and also I don't see how controls make something part of a different genre, I'll admit the second analog stick wasn't used well but I don't see how changing it to be camera control would change the genre entirely?

Pokemon Snap is an on-rails photography game for the N64, it's actually fairly good...well if you like non-violent on rails games.

 

[Vault101]

Problems with the FPS genre

This is NOT a half-life vs. the world thread. Please keep it as such, but as I was reading too many of those recently it made me wonder why do I STILL think HL is one of the best games ever. Is it pure nostalgia? Or do I actually like the mechanics. Had I never played it 12 years ago would I find it just as engrossing today? That is unknowable, but I still find it fun to boot up and play occasionally and I think there are some reasons why. There are some trends in the FPS genre that are keeping it down. Now all these have been discussed before so please dont post to say Weve talked about this. Just dont post if you dont care. Please.

1. Health. Vs Regen.
2. Length
3. Story,
4. Smart AI.
5. Carrying 2 weapons.
6. Varied gameplay.
Well, this didnt start as a wall of text but I guess I had a lot to say. Im sure there are more and a bunch people disagree on. Lets all be nice please, and if you dont care, dont post

Ok. I agree with most of your points, and since I have an internet penis, I'm going to wave it around to, haha.

1. I loved Far Cry 2's health system. This is one case where I want every developer to rip it off.
2. 5 hours for a story is short as fuck, but you gotta remember, most FPSs were never that long. 20 hours is only viable for RPGs, really. Plus there's multiplayer ("i don't care about multiplayer, wahhh" shutup, then don't buy it). I think 7-10 hours would be perfect.
3. Most GAME stories suck, let alone FPSs. They're more about blowing you away with set pieces. Most developers seem to think a smart story can't have great set pieces to coincide with it. *looks at COD4*
4. Yup.
5. 2 weapons plus pistol? yup
6. Ok, this is call of duty's strength. You will never do the same gameplay style for too long. Level design and scripted sequences see to that.

3. why does everyone say that? honestly I dont think game stories are that terrible, I like them better than big dumb cliche filled movies (because in this case Im having fun)

2.usually I dont becaue of multiplayer, But I think the problem is people like me just simply dont buy thease games because its not worth it, but we arnt given a choice or alternitive, I havnt played a FPS in ageis...eather way this lack on length has to go away and we shouldnt be putting up with it (mabye the deal with homefront is showing devs that)

and 20 hours isnt really that much even...

 

[Danceofmasks]

Red Baron had more realistic guns than CoD.
And that's a flight simulator. From 1990.

Just sayin'.

Edit:
Also, Red Baron had the OPPOSITE of regenerating health: degenerating health.
If you get hit by a bullet, you better win quickly (and get back to base) .. or you're going to bleed to death.
And even if you do, expect to spend 2 MONTHS in hospital.

 

[bombadilillo]

I wonder if there is a market for that type of "realism" among the insane Op Flashpoint crowd. Like making them wait realworld weeks to heal injured players and try again. Plenty of people are down with permadeath and that. Have a night stealth mission, if you team gets spotted you retreat to lick your wounds. You could always just start over to get a perfect playthrough, but there are probably people who'd like to play that way.

 

[repeating integers]

This is never really been a problem of realism so much as a limitation of the controller. Simply put there is no good way to switch between a large number of weapons. The difficulty of performing a simple weapon swap increases as the number of weapons a player can carry at any given moment increases.

I dunno. I thought the HL2 Xbox port had quite a good system involving the D-pad. Which could be streamlined into giving you 4 classes of weapon, and letting you carry one of each at all times - using the D-pad to swap between them.

I also like the idea of a system that gives the player 2 separate inventories, like Bad Company (1) did. You had your standard weapons inventory (which could hold 2 weapons) and the equipment inventory (which could hold 2 pieces of "equipment", which were generally just really fancy and cool methods of making shit blow up). The system limited itself a bit, but I think the potential is still there: have a "standard" weapon inventory for stuff like Assault Rifles and Pistols, and then an "exotic" inventory for bigger stuff such as snipers and RPGs. It would probably work best in a sci-fi setting with lots of imaginative weapons.

 

[bombadilillo]

Oh yeah, Resistance FOM had a radial menu for its guns too and when it was open the next weopon button cycled through radial menues, 2 with 6-8 guns each? I forget, but it worked fine. along with next/last weapon. I don't thing weapon selecting is a valid argument against manygun systems, its worked fine plenty of places. It worked in Goldeneye for crying out loud.

 

[dogenzakaminion]

Only problems I have are that the single player campaigns are unoriginal as well as being less than 8 hours. I want a game where it takes me at least 10 hours to beat, without dying even, and I enjoy it thoroughly. I think Halo: CE had the best health system. It had regenerating shields as well as health. The health system gives you durability in fights and the shield system made it so you don't have to worry as much about finding and using health packs. But Halo: CE put it together where both systems benefit each other where you can literally go all out Rambo style and it would be effective as well as other tactics. What other shooters do you have today that you can go all out, Rambo style, and survive? Not many...

I agree. The Hale:CE system was great. Reminded me of the old Rare systems like in Goldeneye. You could never restore lost life until the end of the level, but you could continuously pick up Armour that protected you.

The red jello thing annoys me too. If I'm in a firefight, about to die, and need to either kill everyone really fast or find cover, HOW IS IMPAIRING MY VISION GOING TO HELP ME?? The health bar in Crysis 1 was fine. Regeneration, fine whatever, but I still noticed if I was going to die without making my screen mess up. Granted it did have heavy motion blur but at least I could see shapes.

 

[valleyshrew]

Almost everything about half-life's story that gets praised is due to laziness. Silent protagonist? No need to write dialogue or hire a voice actor. Never leave first person building immersion? No need to work on tricky more engaging camera direction for cutscenes when the user will control cutscenes for you. But wont that be stupid to have them jumping around while people are trying to talk to them and characters not reacting and actually break immersion? Shush you! Linear narrative? Why work on a complex game when a straight line is less than half the work? Why have narrative choices in a video game when people like movies and movies don't have them duh. Linear level design? Why bother creating extra paths when people won't see everything, just create one corridor and change the background scenery after every boss fight. Only a few characters, plot points, exposition, explanation or even dialogue? Too much work! Just create a few dozens lines, that's enough. 3 or 4 plot points is enough for a 12 hour game isn't it? Just fill levels with monsters and things and people will praise the story anyway.

Half-life 2 was much improved narratively, but still really minimalistic compared to actual praiseworthy for their narrative games like mass effect or even deus ex.

I'm sick of seeing posts like this, the exact same complaints come up over and over. Regenerative health isn't horrible, but it should be used less frequently. A game like deus ex human revolution having it is stupid. And I think it's really stupid in halo considering it takes about 5 headshots to kill an enemy, that they can just hide and recharge after that forces the game to be close range which is less skill and gunplay and more nade spam and melee and spraying. But in call of duty? Opponents die after 2 bullets in the foot so it's fine.

What I hate even more than blood on the screen is fading the screen to grayscale in Uncharted. It's a colourful game I don't want it to turn black and white. People don't get shot in the eyes so it's not to do with realism. It's to do with hiding the actual game mechanics (health bar %) to have a cleaner HUD as a complex HUD looks a bit antiquated now.

What I hate most about modern FPS is no option for a more pacifist playthrough. This is one of the things that makes deus ex, metal gear solid, fallout, alpha protocol so amazing as you don't have to kill 300 people, and if you choose not to it makes the game much more challenging and ultimately more rewarding and satisfying.

 

[Hyper-space]

1. Health. Vs Regen. I really hate regen. No matter what game it is all strategy goes out the window and becomes POP UP take out 1 or more baddies while taking damage POP DOWN and wait, repeat. Health makes you accountable for your actions, tense, and makes you think. I am all for hybrid systems. Have a shield that protects a few shots with a nonregen health below. Or health regens to a certain level so your never near zero. Awesome, go for it, but regen still turns all game play into a boring popup cover shooter.

Sixcess put it best, having to search for a health-pack every time you get shot would break up the combat too much. So having regenerative health is a design-choice, not preference.

2. Length, games are too freaking short. I look forward to the day when COD does not have a single player campaign. When they finally drop the pretext and token effort and just make a multiplayer game, put in some bots and challenges for singleplayers if you must. This worked with unreal tournament 10 years ago, its a viable strategy. I personally like single player campaigns more and would LOVE a distinct split. Make multi only games and single only games and put your effort into that. I want a 20 hour campaign. Keep the 5 hour crap. If it was 20 hours with replay value and multiple play style options I might just buy it instead of gamefly.

Wait, you love Half-life (the series or just the first one?), a pretty short game (depends on the difficulty really), but hate short games like CoD? wat wat wat.

3. Story, Im going to skirt tenuously close to the Half life debate here so bear with me. Spoiler alert as well. In half life near the start you have spent hours trying to get to the surface. The scientists have been talking about rumors of the military coming to rescue you all in your fight against mysterious aliens. You enter a room on a catwalk and see 2 soldiers! You are saved! A scientist yells ?Thank God youre here!? and the soldiers brutally gun him down. Thats it. You can surmise that its cover up time and your about to be covered up. Theres no cut scene spelling it out in detail the decisions back in Washington, you know what your character knows, nothing more. Later in the game black ops assassins show up and start taking out the soldiers! Height of irony, now their being covered up too. How much worse have things gotten? Someone high up is freaking out to the point that they dont trust the regular military! Compare this to a recent story telling event in COD:BO. I torture a person violently till they give me some bullet points for the plot, hand them a gun and their on my side now, the guy I just tortured, WTF. WTF, well glad hes not made about the whole insane pain thing. Now its not always necessary to keep just your characters perspective, and knowing plot beyond them can be good, but the modern fps isnt really doing a great job here

Can't fault you there, stories in FPS are generally not the focus, as gameplay, (and most of the time) graphics come first. Also, some games do not need a story (Doom), but games like Homefront (that place a lot of importance on story) need to deliver, no doubt.

4. Smart AI. A lot of review laud the smart AI in fpss like ?they use grenades to flush you out, they flank you?. I think this is a growing symptom of the health regen reducing things to cover/popup shooters. Smart AI really means, you have to switch cover occasionally or theyll get you. 12+ years ago there were smart enemies, they never stayed in the same cover, they flanked you, if you stay in same place they grenade launch your ass. On that point, they like you had grenade launchers on their rifles AND THEY USED THEM. This is all probably a problem with the idea of smart AI. We want challenging enemies not smart. Imagine a game with you vs 100+ actual players coordinating with each other in a single player setting. You would stand no chance at all and it wouldnt be fun.

The thing is, in realistic shooters (such as CoD, Battlefield, etc.), having the enemy run out guns blazing is not a viable tactic, as they are no longer superhuman (as was the case with older shooters). Meaning, that they need to use covers, as they are made out of flesh and bones. Also, there is a difference between scripted AI and smart AI. The former is where the gameplay is usually limited to a small number of ways you can approach the situation, meaning that the programmers can make the enemy do stuff like flank you, because the enemy does not have to deal with dynamic situations. The latter however, means that the enemy has to be able to deal with ever-changing situations and a multitude of approaches. It might not be as cinematic as scripted AI, but it gives the player more freedom in gameplay.

5. Carrying 2 weapons. So you can carry only 2 pistols, but you can carry a m60 with ammo and a rocket launcher. I call shenanigans. Especially when my character model has a FREAKING PISTOL HOLSTER ON IT. At least have pistol +2 others?.This is a weird contention point because I know its silly to carry 12 different guns. Grid based and weight based are good systems but take away from the fps experience with the management factor. I kinda like the one of each style, one long gun one rocket/special one pistol one smg sized. I dont know what I like best here, but its defiantly not 2 guns PERIOD. I wanna save my shotty for when I need it dammit. Having different guns for different situations is fun. A lot of 2 gun games know this and but areas with a bunch of guns before big fights so you can choose. Why not just let me take more then game?

But being able to have one weapon of each type removes strategic elements to the game. F.x. in Half-life 2 (or just games where you can carry loads of guns) all encounters went like this: See Enemy -> Pull out necessary gun. In CoD it goes something like this: See Enemy -> Do i have the necessary gun? if yes, shoot. If no, get closer or draw your enemy near you.

This adds a strategic element to which load-out you choose to have and how you approach (short-range, mid-range or long-range) the enemy, instead of being able to deal with the situation no matter what.

6. Varied gameplay. Fighting of zombies for a few hours with limited ammo and a crowbar, fighting soldiers and aliens, fighting just aliens in another dimension, occasional puzzle, pseudo stealth section, exploration, platforming. Dont get me wrong I like the token stealth level in COD, though its getting more ?follow some dude while he talks? unchallenging with each game. Otherwise shooters are just firefight, walk firefight. There has to be something fun to do between fights that developers can think of.

But the thing is, puzzle sections and such are just a matter of taste (and i think the gameplay you were describing is more like: Fighting section, puzzle section, stealth section and platforming section), developers have been trying to insert more variety in each game (in BLOPS there was stealth, vehicle sections, flying sections and tactical sections). So developers are getting the point.