What is missing in FPS games? Thread

People have been saying that some FPS games are popular because they do things differently. What do you think? Im making a FPS games and want to know what you guys want to see. Thanks for any replies!

I think generally fps games have become very stale. Maybe it's just me being tired of shooting, shooting and shooting but I wish first person shooters would focus more on other gameplay elements like choice, stealth, puzzles, interactivity and physics. I'm a big fan of games like Bioshock and Metro because they focus more on storytelling, level design and atmosphere. I feel games need more depth to really draw me in. This is why I don't like games like COD anymore because you start the campaign and you're killing people before having the slightest idea why there's a conflict in the first place. So I guess (ironically) shooters should focus less on shooting. Just my two cents, feel free to disagree.

Edited by: GC_Vos

Something original and of course something that the players would want more later on after they played the game.
All the current FPS games are all the same to me. (Gameplay and story wise)

Edited by: GamerWolfOps

GC_Vos wrote: I think generally fps games have become very stale. Maybe it's just me being tired of shooting, shooting and shooting but I wish first person shooters would focus more on other gameplay elements like choice, stealth, puzzles, interactivity and physics. I'm a big fan of games like Bioshock and Metro because they focus more on storytelling, level design and atmosphere. I feel games need more depth to really draw me in. This is why I don't like games like COD anymore because you start the campaign and you're killing people before having the slightest idea why there's a conflict in the first place. So I guess (ironically) shooters should focus less on shooting. Just my two cents, feel free to disagree.

Try Black Ops 2, interesting way of doing a branching campaign by having your "choices" done through gameplay instead of an obvious binary choice. ...some of the time anyway.

On topic. FPS games are, unlike most genres, always evolving, always at the cutting edge, and from a gameplay point of view, fun and immersive. Allow me to explain.

First, look at FPS through the ages, from Doom, to Half Life, to Goldeneye, to Halo, to CoD, and many in between. Each game is wildly different, and either revolutionised or popularised a particular mechanic. Now compare, say, JRPGs, where the game is same, but the graphics got better, or driving games where the format hasn't really changed since Gran Tourismo on Playstation.

Another aspect of FPS is that they work on many levels gameplay wise. You can use twitch skills to out speed your opponents, tactics to get the upper hand, or manage resources to have the right tools at the right time. Likewise, you never get hung up on bad cameras, and rarely do you get screwed over by balance issues (in single player at least). However, the main reason, imo, is the immersion, and action. Simply put, shooting and fighting is fun, and how more immersive can you get than seeing through the eyes of your guy.

Most, but not all, anti FPS sentiment I see these days tends to focus on tearing down CoD for reasons barely related to the games themselves. It's a popular game, and thus a popular target for hate. The situation seems unwinnable. "The game is to realistic" "It's not realistic enought" "It doesn't have a message" "The games message is to political" "People only like it because it's popular" "People only play for the graphics (despite the game choosing framerate over graphics)" "There are to many games copying CoD" and so on.

While modern army FPS games are getting stale, they are still going interesting places. Look at Titanfall. We could argue that it's doing what Shogo did in terms of theme, but it's looking amazing with it. Destiny is also looking cool, even though it's underwhelming what I've seen so far. In contrast, you could always play yet other fantasy RPG where a Tank, Healer, Mage and Rouge go on a quest to stop a dark lord and his army of orcs.

for my personally taste all what counds in a FPS is a good Gunhandling and EXPLORING and DISCOVERING things, like world, hidden places, alternative solutions, nice spots, intresting submissions.

In all honesty, I haven't really found an extremely compelling FPS in a while. I've been playing the death match and online game play thing since the days of Windows 95. It's still fun but it's not the same anymore. Besides, a lot seems to really just take ideas from Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament and expand them a bit. There isn't a whole lot new. A lot of FPS games seem to focus on run-n-gun or multiplayer first before anything else.

It's a shame because FPS games have always been some of my favorite. I think they hold the greatest potential. They put the player into the central role through the eyes of the main character like an RPG but more personal. I think the ability to tell a narrative can be a lot better. And I also think because the player has the view through the character that mood and setting can have a greater effect because the player is experiencing it as themselves.

On a side note with the narrative, I think a lot of games are doing it wrong. Game devs tend to treat the narrative, or the story line, like a movie. The game has certain cut scenes or things like that and some major dialogue at key points, but otherwise the levels are breaks in the story and are very jarring. Think of it like reading a book or watching a movie on your phone, but in order to read the next chapter or watch the next scene you have to run two blocks down the street. Then you can stop and watch the next iteration of the story. I think it's all wrong. It has to be treated more like a live play. The story is told through the random, and active, dialogue in the game play. It's told through the artifacts found, the tape recorders and journal entries and such. It's told through the setting and the scenery and the interaction with it. I think some games are leaning in this direction but I can't think of one off hand where it's fully accomplished, though BioShock Infinite and the Last of Us (more recently) have come closer.

I think FPS games have the most potential to do this. I think that a solid narrative like that, combined with setting and mood, are what's missing from a lot of games today. At least from games where a story line is appropriate (action, adventure, RPG, etc...) excluding obvious inappropriate games (arcade, racing, sports, etc...)

FPS games are like a magic formula. Like what Hollywood wants from a perfect movie:

- good cost/profit relation
- no surprises during development
- serial instalment (a sequel is planned)

If Hollywood could make blockbuster movies with the same ease it works for games, there would be no crisis in the film industry. It works well enough for games, because of technological development. In movies you can only have so many new features (3D glasses, for example). In 3D development everything is a newsflash, so if your engine can now do deferred lighting, your studio can work on the same identical game like last year, but you will add deferred lighting and tesselation and make a toad jump to show how awesome the game is.

But it's not. These teams of developers at EA, Crytek, EPIC and the likes are top of the line in their jobs. Highly trained and capable individuals work on creating the next version of the latest copy of their last game ^^
If you ask me that is purely professional work and has nothing to do with passion for designing and developing games. And it's not the mistake of those individuals, they just want to work on stuff they like doing and get paid for it. The problem is that if a studio takes fives years instead of two to create a game with deep story and innovative gameplay, they either get misunderstood and the game bombs or they are successful, but no more than a studio that took a generic idea and put lots of money into marketing, instead of putting time into development. More innovation and more love for game development doesn't make your game more successful.

We, the customer are kinda used to buying one game after the other, just to be disapointed over and over again. Even most AAA games are rushed (often the story feels tagged on and the third act is very short). I can feel how these games feel competent about their functionality, but they lack a few things that games used to have when I started playing. It's probably, because today everything is a company decision and every function of a game has to be sanctioned by a board of executives. Groups don't take risks and don't produce original ideas. Group decisions are all about playing it safe and taking precautions about everything. It was better when only 1 or 2 visonaires had their say about a game.

But the worst thing is that a lot of people are mimicking bad writing, bad design choices and bad ideas in their own games, because they are used to these features being rushed. You have to step aside and tell yourself that you are not part of that cycle of game-recycling and random AAA titles. You are an indie developer, you are meant to have unique ideas and make them into games. It's my hope that indie games will safe the industry at some point. All the big studios have their ways of selling games.
However, what makes a game good to me, is innovation in designing functionality. And I see many indie games, who are doing just that in terms of design and storytelling. They just don't often produce good indie FPS, because the production value of those games is so high (=expensive) and it is hard to break into that particular genre with something that isn't already an established series.

Edited by: SinKing

I would like to see improvements to physics and realism. Such as what occurs in sniper elite v2, with anatomy but in real time, such as if you were to shoot someone in the head, have dynamic brain, blood and bone fragments go flying. Seems that devs only want to improve on graphics but leave game mechanics and realism details where theyve been at for way too long.

m30w wrote: I would like to see improvements to physics and realism. Such as what occurs in sniper elite v2, with anatomy but in real time, such as if you were to shoot someone in the head, have dynamic brain, blood and bone fragments go flying. Seems that devs only want to improve on graphics but leave game mechanics and realism details where theyve been at for way too long.

No.

Squared55 wrote:

m30w wrote: I would like to see improvements to physics and realism. Such as what occurs in sniper elite v2, with anatomy but in real time, such as if you were to shoot someone in the head, have dynamic brain, blood and bone fragments go flying. Seems that devs only want to improve on graphics but leave game mechanics and realism details where theyve been at for way too long.

No.

I agree. This kind of "simulated" realism isn't the purpose of videogames. Leave that to the Matrix...

M30w's post illustrates very well what I said in my last paragraph. Physically more accurate models and lighting, more power to the shaders (and thus, more expensive hardware)etc. aren't gonna change the game developer's dilemma. They are gonna deepen it.
Instead of becoming an artform or getting inspired by art, games are inspired by sales. Which is funny when you considers everyone calls himself an "Artist", these days (2D/3D Artist). Instead of originality, FPS-games are grounded in realism with repetitive scenarios. It's called Ecclecticism, when you don't create from inspiration, but by repetition. In the past it was often a copyist issue (with artworks, etc getting copied and sold). It draws fame from an original design, instead of creating its own design; or in this case: an original game design.

Draw this development to its end and every ecclestic product will be weaker than the ones preceding it. It's uninventive, purely superficial/copyist work that doesn't add new features or surprises you. Everything will be exactly as you expect it - because you know what to expect. I am looking for those developers that can surprise me, in fact I am aspiring to surprise myself too

Edited by: SinKing

SinKing, I find your view of FPS production extremely cynical. While I'm sure there are the big companies like EA farting out that stuff, and players with that mind set, I feel you are selling both parties way short.

As someone who buys FPS games alot, there are disappointments, sure, as there are in any other type of game, but to say that it's people getting suckered in over and over doesn't hold up. Remember, the WW2 fad died, and Modern Warfare became the big thing, largely because people got bored with storming the beaches of Normandy with a Garand and MP40.

Money is not a bad thing in it self. Many great artworks were commissioned, or were otherwise use financial successes.

It seems to me that you are looking to criticise them for doing things you don't like, by implying that they inheritly bad. I love FPS games. I don't mind if they stick to many of the cliches and conventions. I'd like to think it's not out of creative laziness, but rather because of an understanding why it works the way it does. Change for the sake of change is just as bad as staying with what works, arguably worse. I'd rather play a formula FPS that is well made, than an game that throws out all conventions and is a horrible mess.

Edited by: SabreXT

I am finding my games Brutal Nature's FPS game play to be very refreshing.

There are weapons that will one hit kill you easily accessible after a few hours mining/crafting, Yet two people fighting with them can take minutes to kill each other. The guy with the SMG may even win over the guy with the 1 hit rifle, especially at a close range where the low recoil of the SMG and high fire rate lets you keep on target.

Mainly because it uses realistic bullet physics and very fast character movement it is nearly imposable to hit your enemy especially if you are both moving. Not because moving makes you unable to shoot straight, but because its just hard to aim while moving. The person who stops and takes careful aim can often kill the person who keeps moving and shooting. Of course, if both people stop at once, it becomes near instant death for one of them.

Makes it very interesting when one hit kill bullets are whizzing by your head and you have to decide if you want to try and get closer, flank him, run away, change weapons to something more suitable for the distance, move further back, etc.

You can't just camp anywhere either. Someone can dig there way in, or just blow up your cover. You can also build new cover, or sniper spots in mountains.

With the soundar (Think: ability to locate where any gunshot sound came from if you look quickly at your soundar after the shot, but if you panic you forget to) snipers can be located easily on the 2nd or 3rd shot and peppered with suppression fire (or grenades..) until someone can get close enough to kill them. There are also NPC enemy that attack and force people to fire, showing off there position to all.

On death, you drop a fraction of your ammo for anyone else to pick up, randomly selected from random types of ammo you have, Meaning you might not be able to use one of your guns, or it might only have certain types of ammo for it. This also means that if one player with a ton of ammo gets killed once, he loses a lot more then a player with little ammo getting killed multiple times and the other player will likely end up with extra ammo from fighting him.

This also means that while ammo does not encumber you, its a good idea to stash some away somewhere and hope nobody finds it..