what modern shooters are missing

[thedoclc]

I don't think modern shooters are "missing" anything.

If you define the modern shooter as "games like MW and Battlefield," then say, "but they could have this," then you've pretty much defined your way into the games not having something you like. Frankly, I'm tired of the modern, military-themed shooters which follow in MW's footsteps. And that's OK; I've got a ton of other games to play which use different tropes and mechanics and visual styles.

TF2. L4D series. Deus Ex: HR. Bioshock series. Borderlands. Shattered Horizons. Dino D-Day. Nuclear Dawn. Prey. Fallout. Metroid series. Serious Sam. And these are just the "traditional" FPS' I've picked up for a couple of bucks somewhere (minus the new releases). I could toss in the 1st Person Skyrim, Amnesia, and 3rd Person Shooters from Dead Space, Mass Effect, Shadows of the Damned, V:tM Bloodlines, Gears, CoC: Dark Corners of the Earth, etc. Big titles, indie stuff, whatever: shooters today aren't -all- aping MW and BF and they aren't "missing" something unless you're limiting yourself.

 

[Sarge034]

ODST did something similar, stripping the player of power armor and limiting their weapons to just a few CQB weapons. I personally found the game to be quiet enjoyable.

Another thing games in general are missing is a sort of "Oh shit how am I going to survive this?" moment. Anyone who played Mechwarrior 4 Mercenaries may know what I mean.

I would have liked ODST soooo much more if it had a different music score, as I am not a fan of jazz, and it was a bit longer.

If you want a "modern shooter" with "Oh shit how am I going to survive this?" moments I would suggest the newest Medal of Honor. It benefited from being based on an actual incident.

Spoiler: One part for example.....

One part has your squad pushing deep into the enemy controlled mountainside to neutralize heavy machine gun emplacements and RPGs that are firing on a downed Chinook helicopter. The chopper's position is full of casualties and in danger of being overrun. Your squad does the normal "Rambo" routine eliminating untold numbers of combatants. Then you come upon a little hut, and you need to clear it. Your squad stacks up on the door and then BOOM. The door was rigged with a remote controlled IED. Then the shit hits the fan. It is a lot like the final scene in Halo Reach. I spent all 600 rounds of ammo for my SAW and had to switch to my pistol. I heard all of my team mates say they were either out of ammo or on their last mag at about the same time I had run out. The fire was so heave we could only shoot the guys that came around what little cover the house provided at that point..... and then [redacted so as not to completely ruin it].

OT- I think "modern shooters" are missing a compiling story and balanced multiplayer. I love CoD4 as an example of storytelling. It was gripping, compelling, and brutal at all of the right times. I can still remember my disbelief the first time I played and the nuke went off. Better yet, they didn't show the fallout in a cut scene. I had to experience it first-hand. I had to claw my own way out of the chopper and attempt to save myself in all of its first person glory. I was forced to decide what that character did with his dying breathes.

As for a balanced multiplayer.... well I haven't seen one yet in any genre so good luck there.


Just my two cents, but at least they are shiny.

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

What? MGS3 isn't the same kind of game.

To be honest, the problem I have with most modern shooters is the maps. I remember playing World at War and really loving the maps, they really encouraged teamwork, and they were well balanced for different playstyles. Seems to be a very recent thing, having poor maps.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I think modern shooters need to bring back having no weapon limit.

A 2 weapon limit has it's place but I find it is too prevalent.

Strongly agreed. It may provide more in terms of tactics to limit the number of weapons you have but, I strongly prefer variety.

I'd like to see a return (as in, a major return) of health-packs too. It really isn't all that fun waiting in a corner for your shield-bar to come back but, shooting the health out of an enemy's face could easily remedy that. One more small thing: if I kill an enemy and notice they have a pistol strapped to their leg, I'm going to want to grab that thing. I hate when certain enemies in games are animated in a way to suggest that they have weapons/ammo but you can't take it for yourself.

 

[Mozza444]

They don't need anything.
Just look at the sales.

If they adopted all of these ideas they would end up not even being the same game.
Yeah COD is generic, but it fucking works.
You're all throwing crazy ideas into the mix thinking that it will work, but pile all that stuff in and your left with a very sloppy game.

Think of it this way... its like making food.
You get a desert.
I like lots of sweet things, but if i throw them all on one plate it ends up being shit.
You would have been a lot better off with just the ice-cream and sponge cake. Because it works.

 

[Cowabungaa]

another thing is cutscenes, ill admit as a huge fan of MGS the cutscenes can get alittle tedious but they add narative and you actually learn about snakes character and you can actually connect more with him as a person.

And here's why;

Cutscenes go directly against what makes videogames such a powerful, narritive tool. While playing videogames you live the story, you're completely inside of it in a way unlike any other medium, you're a part of it. Cutscenes completely ignore this unique quality of videogames.

Cutscenes remove you from the videogame, they make you stop being a player, a living part of the story, and make you a static spectator instead. And that's not just a rotten shame, it's simply bad narrative design as well, to ignore the specific strenghts of the medium you want to tell your story with.

That's why I love Half Life 2 so much. It tells it's story not through static cutscenes you have to watch, but by embedding the narrative completely inside of the game world. Everything from little newspaper clippings to random lines of citizens to seeing the Combine do their work and the results of it, all to tell you the story of a world in peril.

That's a prime example of how to exploit the unique qualities of the medium that is videogames. MGS4 is the direct anti-thesis of it and an antiquated, backwards way of videogame narrative design. Design videogames as videogames, not movies.

I'd like to see a return (as in, a major return) of health-packs too. It really isn't all that fun waiting in a corner for your shield-bar to come back but, shooting the health out of an enemy's face could easily remedy that.

Neither is having to backtrack through a game looking frantically for a missed medpack because you're on low health and a difficult part is coming up. Even worse is when you can't find one.

I'm not a big fan of regenerating health either, but one thing it does is preserve the flow of the game. There must be some kind of middle ground, maybe something along the lines of Halo: CE, where you have both a shield and health you need to refill with medpacks. Doesn't fit with all settings though.

 

[Weslebear]

SNIP.

I agree wholeheartedly with this, regardless of play time everyone could do well in Call of Duty, even in competitive play it's always the same, the difference in skill level is minimal and almost always situational since most of the time whoever gets the drop on the other gets the kill.

I think the modern shooter that really encapsulates a real learning curve and skill level is Team Fortress 2. Everything is insanely balanced, every class having a severe weakness, powerful projectiles such as the rockets and pipe bombs are hard to time and aim but with skill can be used for extravagant manoeuvres to get around maps as well as juggling enemies and various other uses. If you ever come up against a competitive TF2 player, I had the luck of fighting a pro Demoman just yesterday, you can easily see the skill difference and how they handle all the nuances of the class to perfection. It took a whole pub player team to keep him down, in CoD it takes only 2 or 3 people focusing on a good player to shut them down.

And you get all of that for free, other modern FPS games have a lot to live up to IMO.

 

[Zac Smith]

I think modern shooters need to bring back having no weapon limit.

A 2 weapon limit has it's place but I find it is too prevalent.

The problem is, with more weapons comes more convoluted switching systems - just look at the Half-Life series, any RPG you care to mention - hell, even Zelda has this problem.

Though I will concede that two weapons is usually bad, it's more a symptom of consolisation than anything else. Doom had pretty much the perfect amount and systems, in my eyes, but that involves hotkeys - which are very much missing on gamepads. That really should be the focus of the next controllers - Hopefully the Wii U will make use of its tablet for that purpose, if they keep to their promise of hardcore games being on it.

In half life, the weapons were grouped and you just used the Dpad, was a breeze to switch, u just had to learn which arrow led to which group and the guns in said group, e.g machine guns right, grenades left, pistols up etc etc as an example

 

[Gearhead mk2]

You know what I would like in a realistic shooter, just once, just for something different? America as the bad guys.

Hey, pageking!

 

[kasperbbs]

What i miss the most is the ability to carry at least 4 weapons and health packs, with regenerating health you just don't give a fuck and blaze through the levels without thinking or exploring. I miss the times where i was on low hp and low ammo all the time so i had to be careful and try to land as many headshots as i could.

 

[TBman]

there is also a distinct lack of guns that shoot sharks

 

[Thaliur]

I think modern shooters need to bring back having no weapon limit.

A 2 weapon limit has it's place but I find it is too prevalent.

And an overhaul of the health system. I can live with regenerating health not going anywhere but having no consequences of taking enough bullets to be on 10% hp is a bad joke. Somewhat like the system from Just Cause 2.

I liked the way they handled it in War For Cybertron. The health bar had 4 segments, and each of them would regenerate to its upper limit, but once you lost one segment, it was gone and could only be regained by finding Energon cubes.

 

[Cowabungaa]

Make alternate paths, make the player able to carry a couple of health kits (a couple, one or two, not five) with them and have a button to use them in an emergency, the shield made things pretty easy, try those instead.

I like the medpack in reserve idea, a lot.

As for the shield making it easy, it lasted about two shots on the higher difficulties, I wouldn't call that easy.

I also quite like the system where you regenerate a segment of your health bar, so that you at least have enough to stand a chance, but you have to get medpacks for the rest.

Also, I disagree about regenerating health keeping flow, if I'm stuck behind a wall taking pot shots at enemy soldiers, the game is far worse off pacing wise than if I can take an alternate route and run past the enemy before they can kill me, and that happens far more often than in games with non-regen health (I especially hated this in CoD: Black Ops when you had to fight five juggernauts in a row), in fact this is the main problem I have with it.

Assuming the game lets you get past those enemies, and not forces you to face them. And those cases were the ones I was talking about; where you had to fight a lot of enemies. If you can get past them; cool, that solves the problem, but if you can't it becomes a problem.

And of course, cowering behind a wall isn't good for pacing, but at least you're still in the thick of it. Not so much when you have to backtrack for a medpack, something I did more than once in older shooters. And that's not just slowing things down, that's absolutely disasterous for pacing, not to mention frustrating.

Just goes to show that the medpack system can also be poorly implemented.

That really should be the focus of the next controllers - Hopefully the Wii U will make use of its tablet for that purpose, if they keep to their promise of hardcore games being on it.

Well, you'll only be able to use one tablet controller at a time, so I doubt that they'll design a lot of games specifically for it. That begs the question of course; what will become the main controller.

 

[Sirron Kcuch]

It needs more focus on stealth. Every map in MW3 seems (to me at least) to be just a bunch of hallways and close combat areas with little (if any) places to wait and ambush someone without standing out in the open for every other path that goes through there. As a sniper, this forces me to focus on quickscoping and camping flag locations. Traps are limited to claymores, c4, and bouncing betties but all of those can be seen with a simple perk, also showing your location in the process. Another perk basically lets them walk right through, the device activating a while afterwords. Also, it all seems to be "who has the best offense wins" lately. Tactics with most of the online community is "everyone go to the spot we don't have control of yet." I see flags left unguarded as soon as they're captured, the whole team rushing off to the other side of the map. In team deathmatch, Looking at the map just shows a wave of icons going back and forth from one side to the next as the spawnpoints switch around. They seem to have been getting alittle better adding some vertical gameplay but 2-layers is still kind of low. We need more versatile levels. Bring back some of the underwater fighting, making the surface murky to hide those beneath. Also, let teamless chat be optional. I want to be able to hear someone rage after breaking a killstreak. I'd also like having the ability to climb walls back. >_>

Call of Duty has never had stealth. So using Call of Duty is a horrible example of Stealth.

This is why people don't expect stealthy enemies, which makes sneaky tactics fun, and sometimes effective.

 

[Woodsey]

Player freedom and empowerment, good writing, good characters, good stories, interesting locations and settings, interesting mechanics, good design in general.

 

[Jesse Billingsley]

ODST did something similar, stripping the player of power armor and limiting their weapons to just a few CQB weapons. I personally found the game to be quiet enjoyable.

Another thing games in general are missing is a sort of "Oh shit how am I going to survive this?" moment. Anyone who played Mechwarrior 4 Mercenaries may know what I mean.

I would have liked ODST soooo much more if it had a different music score, as I am not a fan of jazz, and it was a bit longer.

If you want a "modern shooter" with "Oh shit how am I going to survive this?" moments I would suggest the newest Medal of Honor. It benefited from being based on an actual incident.

I liked the soundtrack from ODST. In any case, I'll keep MOH in mind. In fact one of my dorm mates actually owns it so I may ask to borrow it when he gets back.

 

[QuadFish]

Non-regenerating health, if you ask me. Many hours of TF2 has taught me that those moments where you only have a tiny sliver of health left a) make for good tension as you try to find the nearest health kit before some Scout chases you down and b) make you really appreciate your medic. EDIT: BUT ONLY if you design your levels so you're not stuck with a sliver of health left and no way to proceed. That's a real challenge in single player games, but you somehow have to place enough health around the place so it's enough to keep the player going but not enough to keep them constantly at 100%.

Since we're talking about hitscans vs. projectiles, I feel like we should specifically talk about one thing: the ubiquitous iron-sight high-accuracy every-range assault rifle in most shooters these days. There's always a weapon somewhere in the game (particularly in CoD) that turns the game into mouse-2-mouse-1-mouse-2, that lets you pick off anyone in a very short time from almost anywhere. It effectively turns the game into a question of who spots who first. If you see someone and they don't know you're there, they will die faster than they can turn around and sight in themselves. It's a good way of making the game accessible since you can use surprise to your advantage much, much more easily, but it makes death a little random and compresses the skill gap.

Speaking of TF2 again, the lack of any direct, constant DPS weapons like that is arguably one of its most significant design choices, and a lot of the reason I've come to like that game so much. You get 9 individual classes with a wide variety or weapons, but their design coupled with the relatively severe ranged damage drop-off means you don't get any extremely versatile weapons and so you don't get fast, unpredictable deaths. You get tight brawls up close and personal that involve good aim and decent dodging that last a few seconds at least, rather than the half-second long distance shoot-outs you find in CoD. And of course there's a much bigger focus on projectile weapons (including one whole class who has no hitscan weapons at all) that brings prediction skills into the game. I hate to sound like I'm advertising here, but the game just has so many design choices unique to today's games that I feel it really gets right.

So long story short, I argue we should be designing game weapons with much higher times-to-kill (TTK). When you reduce the TTK of any given hitscan weapon to something less than a second, you lose the tension and the skill that would play out from a slightly longer skirmish and end up with many more 'surprise' kills. It places so much emphasis and power on reaction-based shooting that positioning, dodging and other tactics become almost irrelevant.

I won't go too much into it, but obviously modern sprint-style movement mechanics haven't helped. By demobilising your players so much that they have to walk for most of the time and save the sprint for escape moments (and notably, can't use the sprint for actually skirmishing since you're usually limited to only forward movement and not allowed to fire), hitscan weapons suddenly get even more powerful since aiming becomes easier.

I suppose a lot of these choices are made under the assumption that you want to make your game more accessible, but you should really act under the assumption that you're going to end up with an interested and skilled player base, or else you're not rewarding players for persistence and improvement.

 

[WanderingFool]

I see another discussion of regen health vs medpacks in the sub texts of this thread, and that is something I had alot more to think about. There are three games I remember playing that I liked the health systems.

-Halo:CE - not much needed to say really...

-Rage - You had regen health, but it took a bit of time to actually start up, so you had bandages to heal you quickly.

-Pahria - Had a segmented health bar. Health would regen for one segment, but if you lose all of that segment, you had to use a health device to restore that lost segment. Its appearently the same in FarCry 2 and War for Cybertron, but I dont know as I never played those games.

 

[Vigormortis]

I think modern shooters need to bring back having no weapon limit.

A 2 weapon limit has it's place but I find it is too prevalent.

The problem is, with more weapons comes more convoluted switching systems - just look at the Half-Life series, any RPG you care to mention - hell, even Zelda has this problem.

Though I will concede that two weapons is usually bad, it's more a symptom of consolisation than anything else. Doom had pretty much the perfect amount and systems, in my eyes, but that involves hotkeys - which are very much missing on gamepads. That really should be the focus of the next controllers - Hopefully the Wii U will make use of its tablet for that purpose, if they keep to their promise of hardcore games being on it.

While I agree having too many weapons/items can become convoluted in terms of switching "on the fly", and a two weapon limit is too restricting, I must disagree on one thing. Half-Life and other games like it, at least on PC, found a happy medium. You have the extensive weapon selection, but it's married with a quick-switch key. You have all the weapons you need for any given moment at your disposal, but you can also very quickly switch back and forth between two of them during a fight.

This is a system that, in my opinion, needs to be used more often. Especially in multi-player shooters. I'm not entirely sure how effective this sort of system would be on a gamepad, but it's worth exploring.

 

[QuadFish]

I think modern shooters need to bring back having no weapon limit.

A 2 weapon limit has it's place but I find it is too prevalent.

The problem is, with more weapons comes more convoluted switching systems - just look at the Half-Life series, any RPG you care to mention - hell, even Zelda has this problem.

Though I will concede that two weapons is usually bad, it's more a symptom of consolisation than anything else. Doom had pretty much the perfect amount and systems, in my eyes, but that involves hotkeys - which are very much missing on gamepads. That really should be the focus of the next controllers - Hopefully the Wii U will make use of its tablet for that purpose, if they keep to their promise of hardcore games being on it.

I don't know about you, but my fingers can muscle memory Half Life 2's weapons. Stick to 3, 3-twice or 2, and if shit really goes down hit 4 to kill the zombies or 2 twice to kill anything else that's not directly in your face.

EDIT: That often comes down to control issues. HL2 just used the 1-6 keys since that's easy and fast to hit. Zelda has always had the messy 3-item inventory system that guaranteed you'd be back on the inventory screen swapping around items every second minute.