What's with "Iron Sights" in today's games?

[Googenstien]

My personal assumption is they are going for realism with the firearms, but speaking as someone who grew up around guns, used them for sport, and competed in competitors I can safely say that no freaking games I've ever played has ever, or will likely ever, get the feel "real", the sound, the smell, the feel of kick, frankly the sights in the game are just annoying, and this coming from a man who prefers that type of sight on his rifles over a scope.

Congratulations! You have an opinion!

Personally, I love the iron sights. The fact they're shit on a few weapons is an issue of it's own, but in general they're awesome and they give the game a more realistic feel. A tip btw - just because you can't replicate every single bit of reality doesn't mean the strive for realism is entirely useless. Goes for just about every other aspect in both games and real life as well.

Oh and there are vests that give bullet hit feedback and you have modifications out there that give a weapon kick. Sooner or later, it'll be relatively widely available (though not necessarily as popular).

Congratulations! You have an opinion!

Yeah, I kinda stated that with the word "personally", it denotes that the following sentences are merely a personal opinion

hehe.. well I think that statement should start every response in threads here, its pretty fitting.

 

[Squilookle]

At least I'm honest and unreasonable. Your just plain pathetic. You couldn't take a tiny bit of criticism and you had to keep pushing it. You had to keep pushing your opinion but talking to me like shit when I defend mine. Fuck you and the cancer cells you were born from and the cancer cells you will probably produce when you knock up some passed out drunk chick.

Hahaha- are you serious? I kept 'pushing' it!? I do ONE post and then you unleash all this crap like-

But you want to talk shit about me like that, lets talk. Why the fuck do you have a problem with me stating my opinion? Why the fuck are you sticking your nose in the conversation anyways?
And finally, WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU KNOW ABOUT ME KID.

So talk, what the fuck is your problem with me kid.

And I say again, what do you have to say to me kid?

I'm sick of little hipster pussies like you talking shit and then running away without saying a word.

Why do big mouth little hipster fucks like you talk such a big game but then you can't be bothered to stay on subject. Instead all you can do is your little personal attacks, fine I guess I'll join in too. I know little about you but I can tell by your posts that you were probably fed too much. You became fat

All in the space of just FOUR MINUTES! before I do a single reply! Yep, I was totally relentless in my pushing of you. Get a grip, man.

Oh, and that fat assumption? Wrong again.. Boy are you bad at this...

Yes show me an example of this. Where did I say that anybody that disagrees with me over a fucking toy must have never played it.
Show me where I made that connection because I do not recall.

Oh goody! I was hoping you'd take up the offer. Well, since you asked-

GTA IV. Rockstar ditched the arcadey, wacky, and fun handling physics of previous 3D GTAs in favor of a more realistic, much more frustrating driving experience. Also, they didn't let us have jetpacks, handheld miniguns, dildos, and other such nonsensical, unrealistic things that previous GTAs had because they wanted to make it more realistic.

It's not realistic, it's just meant to make it more challenging.
Have you played GTA 4?

And then of course is this beauty, once more for the crowd:

First of all, if you think the GTA games were never headed for realism you never played 3 or you never played 1 and 2 because 3 was a huge leap towards boring realism.

THERE is where. Hopefully this helps you to recall.

I wasn't forcing my opinion on anybody, just correcting his dumb ass mistake.

Oh the irony.

Right maybe it is just my opinion that he's wrong, so fucking what? He's allowed to pretend his opinion is fucking gold but I cant even defend mine without some little fucker like you talking shit about me?

I'm sorry, where was the part where I said he could think his opinion was 'fucking gold' as you put it? The difference is that he can argue his contention rationally, whereas you either can't or won't.

And by the way, this is the internet. You've got to get over having people 'talking shit' about you. It happens. Considering how much you dish out I'm surprised at how little you're able to take. Then again if this is all an offshoot of some depression brought on from a loved one leaving you during a hard period of your life stuck on minimum wage then yes, I sympathise for you and hope your style of living improves. Just don't be so fatalistic about dying alone- it will only be so if you keep lashing out at people like this. Nobody gets friends that way.

One thing that keeps me warm at night is the knowledge that every one of you assholes will eventually experience the feeling of complete hopelessness.

Spite, huh? well whatever keeps you going, I guess.

I don't give two shits about video games anymore, I'm a grown ass man. Games are toys, it's a fucking hobby not a lifestyle.

OK, well, we hope you enjoyed your stay on this gaming website. Good luck with that ass-growth.

 

[Valkyrie101]

Why iron sights? Well, why not? They look nicer, and they're more realistic. That's all there is to it.

 

[Aidref]

So a friend gifted me Battlefield Bad Company 2 on Steam for Christmas and I will admit that despite more normal distaste for FPS games, especially ones that try for "realism" it's not that bad, the RPG elements of gaining XP and gathering upgrades has lured me in a little.

But one thing is bugging me, what the hell is up with the sights? I noticed it with Fallout: NV and other games that I've played, every game seems to have "iron sights" when you aim, what was wrong with the damn cross hairs spread when normal and tighter when pulled in?

My personal assumption is they are going for realism with the firearms, but speaking as someone who grew up around guns, used them for sport, and competed in competitors I can safely say that no freaking games I've ever played has ever, or will likely ever, get the feel "real", the sound, the smell, the feel of kick, frankly the sights in the game are just annoying, and this coming from a man who prefers that type of sight on his rifles over a scope.

Well we are playing a video game so our senses are limited to sight and sound.

And as for the fact that aiming down sights makes the bullet grouping tighter, it's based on fact, if you think about it when you're actually seeing a weapon in an FPS game it's basically by your side so when you fire it's naturally going to kick all over the place and make your shots inaccurate whereas if you aim down the sights then the gun is resting in your characters shoulder, reducing the recoil to an extent and making your shots more accurate.
It's to do with balance in the game as well.

 

[Phlakes]

I'll let Keith David explain-


Also, you criticize about how games are trying to be realistic and then criticize how they're not realistic.

 

[Korolev]

No game will ever come close to realistically depicting guns. A game that does, wouldn't be fun. You might as well say "what's up with games and guns".

I know it's not realistic in the slightest. I know that I cannot use a pistol to shoot a digital dude in the face 400 digital metres away. I know that in real life, automatic guns aren't all that accurate and that in real life guns jam, overheat, have misplaced sights, and whatever.

I also know that grenades are far more dangerous in real life than depicted in a game - in games, you only have to walk a couple of metres away from the grenade to escape all damage - in real life, a grenade can seriously wound someone 50 metres or more away due to shrapnel. So "what's up with grenades in games?"

No one (above the age of 10) really thinks that guns are depicted realistically in game. Heck, I've NEVER held a firearm in my LIFE nor have I seen one up close and yet I know this. It's just a game dude. Iron-sight aiming was introduced solely as a game mechanic - it's a way of playing the game differently - do you want to use spray and pray or use the sights and get better accuracy?

Games aren't real life. In real life, ONE BULLET can be enough to kill anyone if it hits an unprotected area. In real life, you cannot kill hundreds of enemy soldiers by yourself. In real life, hiding in a corner when your eyesight turns red will not allow you to heal.

And you know what? REAL LIFE IS BORING.

 

[Squilookle]

Buddy I never said being nice is ALL you have to do to make friends.

It certainly doesn't hurt to though. Go on, give it a shot.

 

[Edvinas1111]

If you dont like them so much , turn them off xD

 

[tkioz]

So a friend gifted me Battlefield Bad Company 2... what the hell is up with the sights?... every game seems to have "iron sights" when you aim, what was wrong with the damn cross hairs spread when normal and tighter when pulled in?

Yep, I'm with you on that one. Every time I discover a new game has ironsights it's just a massive 'aw crap they just had to, didn't they?' moment. I don't think it's realistic either- in real life we all have two eyes, and at any split second moment we can open the other eye to see things that are hidden behind the gun for the other eye. Seriously if I want a sixth of my already very limited view of an in-game world blacked out, I'd put a book in front of the monitor.

Not to mention their mere presence suggests that you'll never shoot straight unless you are using them. This is one reason why I hated the Wii Goldeneye- the original was as much about running and gunning freely as Unreal Tournament was about headshotting a dude while leaping between skyscrapers in low gravity. Try THAT with Ironsights. Plus it makes every insane kill replay look essentially the same over much of the screen.

If you like battlefield but hate Ironsights, you might be interested to know that before BF2, the series didn't use Ironsights, it used the spreading crosshair that you sound like you prefer.

It's one of many reasons why I much prefer playing BF1942 online. Even today. I might check to see who's on right now, actually, and jump in for some good action packed fun without ironsights.

Wait, open your eye? The hell are you shooting with an eye closed for to begin with? You lose depth perception, you lose field of view, it increases eye strain, I mean, seriously. There IS NO BENEFIT TO SHOOTING WITH ONE EYE CLOSED.

Actually it depends on the person, granted I taught to shoot with both eyes open and almost all soldiers, police, and athletes shoot with both eyes open; however I'm right handed, which means I look down the sight with my right eye, due to an accident at a young age I've got a scratch on my left eye, I found out about it when I was 11, my right eye compensates for my left during every day life, but if I close my left eye everything becomes clearer, it was estimated that my left eye is about useless on it's own.

So when I shoot I close my left eye, it improved my scores at competition shooting, didn't work as well with hunting though.

 

[ZeroDotZero]

snip

You ought to calm down, just forget about this thread. You might hate everyone posting in it, but isn't that just more reason to leave and post somewhere else?

OT: I like ironsights. A lot. They make an awful lot of sense to be in the games that they are in, and in my opinion make them more fun.

 

[TOGSolid]

I rather enjoy iron sights in games from an immersion standpoint .

I just wish the guns would actually shoot from the damn barrel. Then maybe you wouldn't get shot by the top of someone's head and they'd be forced to think more about their surroundings.

 

[NezumiiroKitsune]

I like Iron Sights, I feel much more comfortable aiming down a gun than I do using a tightened crosshair. For all intents and purposes I don't really like crosshairs at all, and if I can I get rid of them, with NV however it allowed me to easier select small objects and general interaction. When I pressed L1 and my character raised the 9mm and took aim down the barrel, happiness flooded me momentarily. The lack of Iron Sights was something I loathed from Fallout 3. I managed to play Oblivion without crosshairs though, which made such a difference to a game that was struggling with immersion from the off.

 

[nuba km]

it's to give you a choice between movement and accuracy in order to add strategy and balance to the game.

 

[CrystalShadow]

I don't know what game you guys are remembering but the goldeneye I remember was played with one analog stick and a lot of buttons. Yeah you could get lucky and get a headshot without using that precision aim but you would almost always have to stand there and hold the R button if you want to hit a guy in the brain.
Today most shooters will allow you to aim freely while moving and people see this as a bad thing?

Seriously lets not be blinded by nostalgia here. The ability to move around and aim up, down, left, or right at the same time sounds like a huge improvement for Goldeneye and shooting games in general. I don't understand why any little improvement needs to be seen as the "thing that ruined what I loved about gaming"

One more thing, Goldeneye was probably the first "ultra realism" game created if we are counting the new COD games as "realistic"

Speak for yourself thank you. ;p

I played goldeneye using the 'honey' controller layout. Aka layout 2.1 - It involves 2 controllers, and hence 2 analog sticks.

Guess what that results in? - Accurate aiming and moving at the same time. Just like every 'modern' shooter.

Granted, it's an obscure control scheme that few people evidently knew even existed, but since Goldeneye predates the Playstation dualshock controller, you could say it more or less invented the modern console shooter control scheme.

Too bad so few people realised it.

 

[kouriichi]

I enjoy them. Insted of flailing your ammo around, you can accually take half a second, and save a few rounds. They allow for percision without a scope, which i honestly perfer, because i dislike scopes.

Iron sights are the way for the future, because theyer the way of the past. Nearly all firearms have iron sights, and theres a reason to it. They work.

 

[Pyroguekenesis]

I find it ironic that someone who claims to use firearms IRL thinks that aiming from the hip with crosshairs is acceptable. I don't find that to be the case at all. There is only one way I fire my weapons -- front sight on the target. I don't hold two handguns in each hand like a jackass, wasting ammunition. I don't "shoot from the hip" either. That clown business belongs in movies.

Who the hell is taking about shooting from the hip or using two guns? I'm talking about a bloody video game, sighting in a target in real life is vastly different then a video game, breathing for example matters, the only time I ever saw breathing in a video game I wanted to hunt down the developers with a rusty butter knife to really make it hurt, judging the wind, and humans (or in my case animals) don't bounce around like humming birds on meth.

And the sights in the games I've see don't work the same as they do in real bloody life anyway, they are basically cross hairs with a different more annoying skin, I'd love to see a game that tried to get the sights "real", players would murder the developers, hell I've yet to see a scope{/b] done correctly in a video game, you do know they don't work as point and click right?

By the way, what does 'snip' mean?
You do know wind that affects the bullet is quite impossible to implement with our technology right? Wind, at least from what i have seen, is merely decoration used for levels. It has almost no tangible effect with bullets.

Sorry but have to correct you there, wind is not "impossible to implement with our technology" there are games that have done it two examples being:
Sniper Elite
Sniper: Ghost Warrior

Both of these games have implemented both wind and gravity in to their gameplay, it is debatable how well they've done it, but they have done it.

Really? Wonder why they never mentioned that in any reviews or anything. You sure it was actual dynamic wind and not an imitation to actual dynamic wind?

Wha? Sniper Elite was a fairly unknown game to most people so I am not surprised about not many reviews on it. But Sniper Elite has the most 'realistic' ballistics in any games I've ever played - straight down to grenade radius, bullet drop, wind intensity, heartbeat etc. But that changes according to the level of difficulty unless you chose custom for all the stuff.

Sniper Warrior however...to say this bluntly - had pretty much almost no realism to it despite some gimmicky reviews on it and some slight ballistic aspect. And I have played both Easy and Hard mode - even that weird locking system it had. It even had really bad reviews like 55% or something. At least it didn't have the stupid CoD veteran AI, and their stupid ability to shoot you before you even poke out through a doorway. Well, I can't complain it was a good attempt executed badly but still not bad.

By the way, what does 'snip' mean?

 

[_Cake_]

I just turned it off in new vegas. I could hardly see what I was shooting at cause the gun was in the way.