FPS game. Need input.

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frag.machine
Posts: 2126
Joined: Sat Nov 25, 2006 1:49 pm

Re: FPS game. Need input.

Post by frag.machine »

Irritant wrote:Innovation. Skill. Immersion.

Look, we've all played the hell out of UT and Quake, there is no point in making a clone of these games without some updates in both game play and visual appeal. That seems to be the pitfall I see looking at most arena FPS games. We already have these games, so do something that takes it to a new level in some way. Major studios aren't going to give you what you want because they are catering to today's generation of gamers who are quite frankly, lazy. They are catering to the "everyone gets a trophy" crowd. UT3 failed, and every single arena FPS since has had no traction whatsoever. Some have tried to be innovative, but all have "dumbed down" the experience. That's been nearly 10 years now...

Health regeneration, auto bunny hop, no strafe jumping, etc, is just plain stupid. I get the whole "but newbs get pwned" thing, but when you dumb down a game, people eventually get bored and the game dies. Skill is an important part of the addiction process. Newbs who are cut out for it wil stick around, and become loyal fans/players.

You know, you pointed something important here.

What's the most successful FPS out there ? Counter-Strike. For like, 15 years. I personally don't like it, but I have no problems to admit its success. Requiring a fair ammount of skill doesn't prevent it from having a respectable community even today.

Team Fortress 2 was for a long time the faster and twitchy FPS you could get, and I got literally THOUSANDS of fun playing it before it became more "casual-player-who-wants-to-spend-money-in-hats-and-taunts" focused. Different from CS though, the community started to dwindle exactly when the focus on skill and gameplay shifted to monetization and easy access to the casual player.

And TF2 is a good example for an important lesson: every concession you make to the casual player usually is something that will weakens the experience for the rest of your audience. So, you should ask yourself: are you doing a fad to be consumed by a lot of casual players until they are lured by the next shiny thing in the horizont (*cough*Destiny,Titanfall*cough*), or are you creating a game aiming a longer life span, focused in a smaller but more focused community ?

Answering this question will help to decide between some of the items above mentioned.
I know FrikaC made a cgi-bin version of the quakec interpreter once and wrote part of his website in QuakeC :) (LordHavoc)
Dr. Shadowborg
InsideQC Staff
Posts: 1120
Joined: Sat Oct 16, 2004 3:34 pm

Re: FPS game. Need input.

Post by Dr. Shadowborg »

Irritant wrote: Health regeneration, auto bunny hop, no strafe jumping, etc, is just plain stupid. I get the whole "but newbs get pwned" thing, but when you dumb down a game, people eventually get bored and the game dies. Skill is an important part of the addiction process. Newbs who are cut out for it wil stick around, and become loyal fans/players.
I hear this. Still the challenge here is to introduce skill without turning it into a "newbs get pwned" so hard, they just get bored and don't bother to stick around long enough to make the grade.

Incidentally, bunnyhop is stupid enough as is. Mashing the jump button every time you hit the ground isn't skill. I'd rather just have some jetpack / haste pickup that lets you fly / skim / turbo along the ground at high speed. Maybe even fast enough that you need skill to avoid crashing into things. :razz: (Yes, painkiller's traumatic bunnyhop requirements have completely turned me against bunnyhop. Dammit, I still need to finish BOOH. And I don't wanna. That game is the only one I have that has made me ragequit. :mad: )
frag.machine wrote: And TF2 is a good example for an important lesson: every concession you make to the casual player usually is something that will weakens the experience for the rest of your audience. So, you should ask yourself: are you doing a fad to be consumed by a lot of casual players until they are lured by the next shiny thing in the horizont (*cough*Destiny,Titanfall*cough*), or are you creating a game aiming a longer life span, focused in a smaller but more focused community ?

Answering this question will help to decide between some of the items above mentioned.
Except that multiplayer arena shooters are intrinsically a "fad" to be consumed by a lot of casual players (with the exception of the few non-casual players) until they are lured by the next shiny thing on the horizon. :wink:

Back to the OT, it should be:

1. Fast (but not overly so)

2. Weapons should look nice, with nice animations, and effects consistent with the weapon.

3. Rockets should NOT travel at high speed, nor should they have blast radii equal to a small nuke. (I'm looking at YOU, Quake! :razz: ) High damage is acceptable, but please, involve aiming skill more. :wink:

4. Reloading of weapons should also be considered from a skill standpoint. (It's okay to have a few weapons that feed straight from your ammo supply, this will help to differentiate from "Squad Support" type weapons and regular weapons.)

5. Extra gametypes would be nice. Deathmatch, CTF, Domination, Assault, Headhunter / Bountyhunter (you only get credit for kills once you take the skulls to the cash in point), Holywars / demontag, etc.

6. Like irritant said, varied and sometimes multicolored levels / environments. (Avoid quake mono-browning, a little color can go a long way) Also some remakes / retakes on classic maps would be neat.
hondobondo
Posts: 207
Joined: Tue Sep 26, 2006 2:48 am
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Re: FPS game. Need input.

Post by hondobondo »

fun murder. zero learning curve. lan friendly. free or really really really cheap. coop
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