Personally, I always thought this was stupid. A pistol shouldn't really make you feel weak.Coppernerves said:
Ode to the pistol.
- Thread starter Coppernerves
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Oh I love pistols. My favorite are probably Maria and Lucky from Fallout: NV, maria felt just so elegant and lucky was so powerful. I also love using pistols in Max Payne 3, it was just meant for that game. Oh! and red dead redemption, but thats sort of a give in.
Well, actually those games made you feel weak by starting with NO weapon, then a blunt weapon (crowbar and wrench respectively) then with a weapon like a pistol when you've finally settled right in. That's the trope.Zachary Amaranth said:
The pistol was not the "starter weak state" weapon, it was the "harvest weapon" you could confidently use it on weaker enemies knowing they'd likely drop pistol ammo, and save up the machine gun round, shotgun shells and so on for big fights. It's not good but it's okay for picking off enemies from a distance if you are seeking to conserve your health. You were never really afraid with the pistol, usually you could hang back and pick people off easily.
Pistol was made almost totally redundant in Half Life 1 where the submachine gun used the same ammo and at least seemed to use the ammo more effectively. I think the pistol was only ever used for headcrabs as it was less likely to fire more shots than needed.
If I remember correctly the 9mm pistol didn't appear in Opposing Force at all, just the all-powerful desert eagle that had plentiful ammo and was more powerful per shot and had better effective range and fire rate than the shotgun. Yeah, early FPS games weren't exactly perfectly balanced in terms of weapons.
I've always liked games where you were pretty much forced to run and hide at first, rather than have inexplicably weak, sparse and dumb enemies. Half Life 2 did better job of this, you were definitely left with the impression of being on the run for the first third till very well equipped and experienced. More games could ease you into it that way.
I think I may have typed without thinking enough, after all, you don't go up against many hostiles in those early stages, and you don't have to run or hide from them.Zachary Amaranth said:
So I am reconsidering my opinion.
Perhaps the idea is that it means the player doesn't have to deal with firing full auto, or fighting much resistance.
This would help players new to the genre learn the basics.
I disagree with Treblaines' idea of it being a "harvesting" weapon, couldn't the player just find ammo when he found weapons?
The coolest in the world is the AKM, and I will hear no argument otherwise.
However, the second coolest gun is pretty much any handgun. Wherever it is viable, I tend to use pistols as much as possible.
For example, in GTA IV I just didn't have any fun with it if I didn't dress Niko in a grey suit and exclusively use pistols. Nothing says 'stone cold badass' like a ************ in a suit dispensing carnage from a weapon he can conceal in his jacket pocket. I don't know how many of you remember 007 Nightfire, but if you went through that game using anything other than the golden, silenced P2K (P99 for those of us in real life), you were doing it woefully wrong. The sniper level is an exception, as is the awesome level in the skyscraper where you get the deagle and the SG5. Halo's already been covered. Black Ops had the unholy combination of second chance pro + magnum revolver. And to whoever mentioned Alpha Protocol, bravo. The only way to play that game was a stealthy, pistol wielding, karate kicking secret agent of badass. Knocking out fools left and right, because real badasses know when to kill. But being an unstoppable force of nature when the chips were down.
Hell, even KotOR II gets in on the fun. Force deflection + Precise Shot + Duelist + Mandalorian Ripper + Keen scope = the most badass, wild west Jedi in the galaxy. Funny how those robes look less something you throw on after a shower, and more like a duster coat when you're holding a gun...
The only game where I deviated was ME3. I'd had a blast the previous two games rocking an Infiltrator limited to sniper rifle for distance, pistol for up close fun. But in ME3 I pretty much exclusively used the sniper rifle, with the lightweight Avenger as backup for husks/CQC. I don't really know why, it just seemed to make more sense to have a full auto complement to the heavy hitting Mantis/Widow.
However, my badass, renegade adept used nothing but pistols. Well, and biotics obviously. And yeah, the Carnifex is pretty badass. Yeah, the Paladin woops even that for stopping power. But there is nothing cooler than the Phalanx. Nothing.
However, the second coolest gun is pretty much any handgun. Wherever it is viable, I tend to use pistols as much as possible.
For example, in GTA IV I just didn't have any fun with it if I didn't dress Niko in a grey suit and exclusively use pistols. Nothing says 'stone cold badass' like a ************ in a suit dispensing carnage from a weapon he can conceal in his jacket pocket. I don't know how many of you remember 007 Nightfire, but if you went through that game using anything other than the golden, silenced P2K (P99 for those of us in real life), you were doing it woefully wrong. The sniper level is an exception, as is the awesome level in the skyscraper where you get the deagle and the SG5. Halo's already been covered. Black Ops had the unholy combination of second chance pro + magnum revolver. And to whoever mentioned Alpha Protocol, bravo. The only way to play that game was a stealthy, pistol wielding, karate kicking secret agent of badass. Knocking out fools left and right, because real badasses know when to kill. But being an unstoppable force of nature when the chips were down.
Hell, even KotOR II gets in on the fun. Force deflection + Precise Shot + Duelist + Mandalorian Ripper + Keen scope = the most badass, wild west Jedi in the galaxy. Funny how those robes look less something you throw on after a shower, and more like a duster coat when you're holding a gun...
The only game where I deviated was ME3. I'd had a blast the previous two games rocking an Infiltrator limited to sniper rifle for distance, pistol for up close fun. But in ME3 I pretty much exclusively used the sniper rifle, with the lightweight Avenger as backup for husks/CQC. I don't really know why, it just seemed to make more sense to have a full auto complement to the heavy hitting Mantis/Widow.
However, my badass, renegade adept used nothing but pistols. Well, and biotics obviously. And yeah, the Carnifex is pretty badass. Yeah, the Paladin woops even that for stopping power. But there is nothing cooler than the Phalanx. Nothing.
STALKER gave a lot of love to pistols too. At close range (Dogs, snorks, bloodsuckers) if you didn't have a shotgun the pistol (UDP compact shoots fast hard and accurate!) could do in a pinch, the AR's were pretty hard to use accurately within 10 meters against fast-moving enemies, as well it should be.
My fave was the Halo Reach pistol just cos not many people knew how to use it effectively so I was able to spawn with a precision weapon in any game mode.
It depends on how you define power. Total energy delivered? Yes, rifle rounds, especially larger calibres, will win out, but isn't there more to it than just speed and size and the temporary wound cavity? A .22 short to the ear canal has more 'stopping power' than a rifle round to the toe.Treblaine said:
My post was primarily referring to the properties of the ammunition. Hollow point and expanding core ammunition cut much wider wound channels than FMJ. There's a reason hunters don't often use FMJ--things like Core-Lokt are more efficient killers, meaning they're more humane and you don't have to track the target nearly as far.
Even then you may be right that the total advantage of the increased kinetic energy outweighs the benefits of hollow point and soft core ammunition, I didn't bother to check, but I still don't believe the difference is nearly as drastic as it's made out to be in most health point based damage models. I know I wouldn't want to take a Hydra-Shok to the heart any more than a 7.62.
The magnum from Goldeneye 64...a true powerhouse. Nothing stood up to it. Mix it with DK mode and you can virtually never miss.
The Magnum in Half-Life was a beauty as well. Just as powerful and with a fittingly low chance to run across ammunition. The Desert Eagle in Opposing Force was made even cooler by the addition of a laser dot. You could almost never find ammunition for it, that's how brilliant it was.
The Magnum in Half-Life was a beauty as well. Just as powerful and with a fittingly low chance to run across ammunition. The Desert Eagle in Opposing Force was made even cooler by the addition of a laser dot. You could almost never find ammunition for it, that's how brilliant it was.
"A .22 short to the ear canal has more 'stopping power' than a rifle round to the toe. "PeterMerkin69 said:
Well that's really comparison of apples and oranges. And anti-tank gun is pretty weak... if it completely misses.
Like for like, rifle almost always wins out.
i suppose one way you could balance it for a game is with weapons "damage spread". I don't mean over range like COD, I mean each shot at a given range hitting a specific hitbox.
The AK47 round would have a damage rating of 25 to 80 for say hitting the "thigh hitbox" while the pistol does a rather consistent 25-30hp. The logic being that if it just goes through the thigh muscle and doesn't "yaw" (that is, turn sideways as the bullet is quite long an pointed and it's like trying to balance a pencil on it's tip, so it' turn broad side on doing more damage) then it'll zip through and have an effect much like a pistol, hence both rifle and pistol have the same bottom end. But there is a very good chance the rifle will hit bone or artery, where it has mass and velocity to shatter bone and sever artery (where a slower rounded bullet is more likely to literally push the artery aside unless it it's it perfectly dead on, arteries are tough).
That's how it would be from a gameplay perspective. And for things like the head which is very bony, game over man, game over.
Well, you want to look out for where hollowpoint are actually proven effective and where they are simply presumed effective.
Hollowpoints are proven effective by hunters with high power cartridges, either rifles or at the very least magnum revolvers. It's considered "trick shooting" to take down deer (similar size and build to humans in terms of cardiovascular system) with a weak weapon like a pistol or bow.
Hunters use hollowpoint there where they need and use all that power for a bullet to expand well and penetrate right through the thigh strong ribs/muscle, though heart AND lung and then out the other side, quickly draining lungs of air.
See, pistols really lack in power, kinetic energy that is. Experiences with law enforcement using hollowpoints has been less than exemplary. Take for example the 1986 FBI Miami shootout, one of the most studied shootouts. An FBI team armed mainly with 9mm pistols and .38 revolvers loaded with hollow point ammunition ambushed a pair of bank robbers, they outnumbered them 4 to one, had them cornered and surrounded. In the ensuing gunfight the FBI got several good hits with their pistol on the suspects, the hollowpoints opened up fine, but they did not penetrate deep enough. One was even shot in the face, with a bullet lodged in their fractured skull, but he was only dazed for a few minutes. The robbers almost got away in another vehicle when an agent they'd shot and thought was dead is able to sneak up on them, blast both of them in the car with a shotgun then finally stop them with practically contact shots to the forehead.
The coroner's report found the earlier shots failed to stop the killers because the expanding pistol rounds didn't penetrate deep enough. They found it was utterly trivial whether they expanded or not, and they did. But a full depth narrow wound is better than a broader shallow one. The conclusion was to go back to FMJ, or use far more powerful weapons for hollowpoints.
Really, trying to increase pistol effectiveness by making bullets only reach 2 or 3 millimetres at MOST from the radius is futile. Coronors know how people die and are debilitated by being shot, a bullet being slightly bigger (hollowpoint expansion) doesn't make it more effective, it indirectly makes the bullet less effective my more resistance, it penetrates less.
Military forces around the world haven't had particular problem using 9mm FMJ.
Hollowpoints for pistols struggle to reliably expand by 50% and then struggle to penetrate.
Rifles with hollowpoints much more reliably expand to 2x the initial diameter and still penetrate well. And standard rifle bullets, spitzer rounds yaw and fragment, which is even more destructive than hollowpoints.
So what applies for pistols in terms of hollowpoints applies double for rifles.
The difference isn't THAT dramatic... mainly because bullets are so deadly anyway, yet most people miss and don't know if they missed or the bullet simply had no effect. It does have a positive feedback, if someone is scared and causes them to miss, they panic and think they are dealing with some sort of terminator and their panic causes them to be more likely to miss the next shot.
Pistols are going to be weak in games or else they are just going to be going too far away from realism.
They can be made more powerful but when you cross that line you can do anything, it's at the cost of other weapons in the game.
I think if you want a powerful and accurate single-shot weapon in your game, that's the role for a battle rifle like M14, FN FAL or HK G3.
I never liked pistols much IRL and I only liked the few in games with good piercing like the Desert Eagle clone in the RE series and the revolvers from Bastion when fully upgraded.
That's one thing I always thought games did wrong for upgrades, put too much incentive into putting it all into one weapon to build on previous advances so as to get the most but the result is neglecting the others.Dfskelleton said:
One idea, I wonder if any games do it, is weapons upgrade (or skill for a weapon) need exponentially more put in to progress to the next level, by the logic that while it's not hard to become proficient with a weapon, it it's twice as hard to become advanced and so on to the highest level. But you'll be swimming in points by then, there'll be a lot of incentive to throw some towards another weapon that they can become proficient in quickly.
That might have turned me off Deus Ex, you start at such an incompetent level unable to hit anything, it's like jsut a random guy turned up for the job.
I would like to revise my choice to the Magnum from Resistance:
High damage and fairly bloody accureate even at medium range, the bullet stays into the target and explodes upon activation of the secondary fire. In the campaign this can be great against swarms and in multiplayer it can be easily viewed as a "dick move" to pump 2 shots into a guy then run away and blow him up about 30 seconds later.
Also, I can't believe I forgot the badassery of Cerberus:
High damage and fairly bloody accureate even at medium range, the bullet stays into the target and explodes upon activation of the secondary fire. In the campaign this can be great against swarms and in multiplayer it can be easily viewed as a "dick move" to pump 2 shots into a guy then run away and blow him up about 30 seconds later.
Also, I can't believe I forgot the badassery of Cerberus:
If you used the better, more powerful ammo types, the pistol in Rage could theoretically be used through the entire game.
Thank you trusty side-arm, for always having ammo, even when it should be impossible. There's also a certain charm about using a pistol and taking skyscraper-sized opponents down with well placed shots, instead of using the gun that shoots artificial stars at enemies and is the size of a truck.
The G18 with Silencer has saved my life many times in BF3 and is on my top 10 weaponlist.
And if a game has a Desert Eagle.. im already 99% sold on the game... my favorite pistol of all time.
And if a game has a Desert Eagle.. im already 99% sold on the game... my favorite pistol of all time.