Overstocked much?

[Saskwach]

Few games now really demand you watch your ammo. I peg this at the increasing user-friendliness of videogames. Which is cool - sometimes you just want to shoot people without the kind of frustrations and realism that go into every day life (have you done everything at work? You didn't forget something didn't you? Go do it, quick. Alright, good. Now how are you doing for time? You're behind aren't you? Better quicken the pace. Oh and don't forget that extra job you have to do today...)
Still, it's a bit disappointing that there's none of those "oh shizzle" moments when you realise you're not really kitted to shoot all those guys in the clearing with your few remaining bullets - or, even worse, nothing more deadly but the gentle 'click' of an empty gun.
What do you think? Is the world falling apart now that resource management is going down the tubes, or is running out of bullets unfun?

 

[willard3]

When you are constantly running out of ammo, and the game throws too many opponents at you, then it's not fun.

But most games feel the need to throw lots of guys at you, otherwise people get bored or something. So they compensate by giving you a massive ammo capacity.

A game like the new Operation Flashpoint works on the opposite spectrum...you don't start with tons of ammo (maybe 4 mags or so), but firefights are more spread out, and encounters with more than 6 enemies or so are rare.

 

[Fire Daemon]

Games, especially FPS, have grown much more fast paced over the past few years. Since the shield/health recharging has become a popular measurement of how dead you are I've found that games expect you to always been on the move and always be killing something except in a few rare parts such as the stealth level in CoD4 for example. When you are constantly on the move in this way it would be rather backwards of the developer to break up this momentum with ammo pick ups and God forbid, walking back to get more bullets.

There are plenty of times when having a rare amount, or not an armoury worth at least, of ammo works in a game though. In Half Life 2 and it's episodes you run out of ammo for the revolver fairly quickly but this is balanced by it's power making it a gun for the sharpshooters. The SMG has a ton of ammo lying around but it can take a lot of bullets to bring something down, especially if you aren't very good at the game. In Half Life 2 you can run out of ammo for the guns you like to use such as the revolver but you will always have something to fall back on. This means that you can go looking for ammo if you wish or just keep plowing forward.

Thinking about it actually, a lot of games have low levels of ammo for the special guns. In Halo 2 it was rare to find ammo for the Plasma Cannon and with the Energy Sword can't be filled back up. Even though you find plenty of Plasma Guns/Pistols and bullets lying around it's rare to find the special things (in some levels, others not so much). Halo 2 actually made a lot ammo scarce on the Arbiter levels which I always found odd. Halo 3 continues this trend with some equipment only being found once or very few times in the game. In these you always have Assault Rifle ammo to fall back on but if you want to use a special weapon you need to hold on to it for a long time and use it sparingly, some of the time anyway. Other times they throw all the guns at you which always annoyed me in those games.

Some don't bother with keeping the special ammo rare such as CoD4. You have like 9 grenades for the grenade launcher in campaign or maybe more. It's obvious that in these games they don't want you running around trying to find ammo. You can't pick up launched grenades so there is a conservation thing going on but I don't think you can easily run out. If you do run out it isn't such a big problem anyway.

Some games have unlimited or close enough ammo because it's easier. If Mass Effect had an ammo count I know I would be carrying around a million of the things and so would everyone else. Not to mention that you'd have to make sure that at least two people are fully stocked but if you run out of ammo on a mission, you're screwed.

 

[Saskwach]

Snip.

...You know, I hadn't thought about it like that.

 

[squid5580]

I am going to use Halo 3 as an example as why this sucks. When you need a million bullets to take down an enemy. You can only find guns that have a few bullets and you can't just take the bullets and must replace your gun. So you end up firing off a few rounds then running away to seek out a new gun it becomes tedious.

 

[Chipperz]

I am going to use Halo 3 as an example as why this sucks. When you need a million bullets to take down an enemy. You can only find guns that have a few bullets and you can't just take the bullets and must replace your gun. So you end up firing off a few rounds then running away to seek out a new gun it becomes tedious.

...When has that ever happened to you in Halo? Seriously. When? More ammo is only a pistol-whip away!

I'm going to give you two examples from Fallout 3 to highlight what I think about this;

I play Small Arms. I love the satifying "BOOM!" of the Hunting Rifle and Combat Shotgun. Back when I was low level, I would frequently get into fights with Raiders because, although it took a ton of 10mm shots, I'd frequently get more/better ammo back. This was immensly fun.

Fast Forward to level 24, and the last level of the Broken Steel Campaign. There's one point where you get into a fight with 10-12 Enclave Troopers, all with energy weapons. This is after having to fight your way through an entire platoon before that. All of my guns were broken/on their last legs, I had practically no ammo for any of them, and I hadn't got any points in Energy Weapons so the stuff the Enclave drop is next to useless. I died multiple times trying to kill a power armoured soldier with a gatling laser with a tire iron.

Which do you think was more fun?

 

[wooty]

Fallout 3 at the start before your strong enough to ventre into the heart of the mall in DC
pain in the arse to find decent condition weapons or ammo, but I guess it gets balanced out with melee weapons

Also like to throw halo 2 into this aswell, plenty of plasma rifles lying around, but which do near dick all after you start playing as the arbiter

 

[ManiacEskimo]

I'd like to see a game where the enemies corpses can be looted further, they surely must be carrying more than the single clip of ammo that is in their rifle! Of course the PC should only be able to carry as much ammo as he can fit on his body without falling over or it getting in the way.

Same thing with guns.

 

[TPiddy]

I'm going to give you two examples from Fallout 3 to highlight what I think about this;

I play Small Arms. I love the satifying "BOOM!" of the Hunting Rifle and Combat Shotgun. Back when I was low level, I would frequently get into fights with Raiders because, although it took a ton of 10mm shots, I'd frequently get more/better ammo back. This was immensly fun.

Fast Forward to level 24, and the last level of the Broken Steel Campaign. There's one point where you get into a fight with 10-12 Enclave Troopers, all with energy weapons. This is after having to fight your way through an entire platoon before that. All of my guns were broken/on their last legs, I had practically no ammo for any of them, and I hadn't got any points in Energy Weapons so the stuff the Enclave drop is next to useless. I died multiple times trying to kill a power armoured soldier with a gatling laser with a tire iron.

Which do you think was more fun?

I actually had the opposite problem. I started a small-arms guy, but I went back to try and make a heavy weapons guy and could not find dick all for heavy weapons ammo. I basically had to grind my way through the story quests until the Enclave showed up or buy any available ammo from shops and traders.

 

[squid5580]

I am going to use Halo 3 as an example as why this sucks. When you need a million bullets to take down an enemy. You can only find guns that have a few bullets and you can't just take the bullets and must replace your gun. So you end up firing off a few rounds then running away to seek out a new gun it becomes tedious.

...When has that ever happened to you in Halo? Seriously. When? More ammo is only a pistol-whip away!

I'm going to give you two examples from Fallout 3 to highlight what I think about this;

I play Small Arms. I love the satifying "BOOM!" of the Hunting Rifle and Combat Shotgun. Back when I was low level, I would frequently get into fights with Raiders because, although it took a ton of 10mm shots, I'd frequently get more/better ammo back. This was immensly fun.

Fast Forward to level 24, and the last level of the Broken Steel Campaign. There's one point where you get into a fight with 10-12 Enclave Troopers, all with energy weapons. This is after having to fight your way through an entire platoon before that. All of my guns were broken/on their last legs, I had practically no ammo for any of them, and I hadn't got any points in Energy Weapons so the stuff the Enclave drop is next to useless. I died multiple times trying to kill a power armoured soldier with a gatling laser with a tire iron.

Which do you think was more fun?

I found I was going through this process all the time (but I was playing heroic alone). I am not one who uses melee unless there is no other choice (like they are right around a blind corner). Don't get me wrong I am not bashing it. I am not a hater (nor am I a lover). That is just one of the few issues I had with it that kept it from perfection IMO (of course assuming I am entitled to have an opinion that differs from the fanboys and the haters).

 

[RomanLegacy]

Lower Ammo works great in open ended sandbox games. Fallout 3, saints row 2 (In the begining)and even oblvion to a lesser degree (Arrows and weapon durability) simply because you can find more ammo and come back. When you do that, it doesn't feel like story progression is being slowed, because you're still playing, searching for ammo. (Killing weaker guys, buying it, looting ect.)

In level based games however, not having a bunch of ammo directly interferes with story progression, because there isn't that many ways to aquire it. In level based games you can't buy it, you just have to search around, or remember where some is in order to progress. It directly stops you from advanacing because there is nothing else you can do.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

I am going to use Halo 3 as an example as why this sucks. When you need a million bullets to take down an enemy. You can only find guns that have a few bullets and you can't just take the bullets and must replace your gun. So you end up firing off a few rounds then running away to seek out a new gun it becomes tedious.

...When has that ever happened to you in Halo? Seriously. When? More ammo is only a pistol-whip away!

I'm going to give you two examples from Fallout 3 to highlight what I think about this;

I play Small Arms. I love the satifying "BOOM!" of the Hunting Rifle and Combat Shotgun. Back when I was low level, I would frequently get into fights with Raiders because, although it took a ton of 10mm shots, I'd frequently get more/better ammo back. This was immensly fun.

Fast Forward to level 24, and the last level of the Broken Steel Campaign. There's one point where you get into a fight with 10-12 Enclave Troopers, all with energy weapons. This is after having to fight your way through an entire platoon before that. All of my guns were broken/on their last legs, I had practically no ammo for any of them, and I hadn't got any points in Energy Weapons so the stuff the Enclave drop is next to useless. I died multiple times trying to kill a power armoured soldier with a gatling laser with a tire iron.

Which do you think was more fun?

How did you manage to get to level 24 and to the end of Broken Steel without points in energy weapons?

At that point it's tough to find somewhere to put all your skill points!

Also, you can repair them to make them more effective. There is a fucktonne of weapons and ammo in that enclave base.