Slashdot Mirror
Ten Maxims Every FPS Should Follow
The Game Career Guide site has up a story that tries to lay down some rules for a good First Person Shooter. The article advocates in favour of player choices, fast action, and rich environments; keep the boring cutscenes and make sure the players are getting a great bang for their buck. From the article: "Don't allow the player to play the game half-heartedly, which is a dangerous stumbling block at any point of the game. Example: Half-Life 2. While the introduction presenting the environment of City 17 was much more effective than the tram sequence of Black Mesa from the game's predecessor, the sheer length of time between point insertion and getting the crowbar would never have worked in any other game."
The article was on 2 pages. Were we reading the same article? I don't consider that amount of content to be too little for 2 freaking pages.
Inflammatory? Nowhere in the article did the authors insinuate that games should not bother to have a plot, their assertion was that a good plot would still make for a boring game if the gameplay elements are not there - and I reckon the vast majority of gamers will agree with that.
And where in the world did the article claim that MMOGs were bad? Not to mention one of the authors lists "Guild Wars" amongst his favorite games - hardly an anti-MMORPG fanatic.
Too many FPS games get so caught up in their own little world that they forget about making the experience fun. I recently beat Doom III (three years late, I know) and one word best describes it: boring. Sure, the weapons and environments (Mars, hell) are damn awesome, but the actual gameplay is monotonous and contrived. I actually turned on God Mode just so I could beat the game faster...
Now look at Team Fortress Classic. No other online FPS is as fun and entertaining, for me anyway. And the game is almost 7 years old! TFC has no story, virtually no learning curve, no preset environment, and the graphics aren't that great. It just has balanced classes and some awesome maps (Dustbowl is one greatest FPS maps ever crafted). Red Team and Blue Team just kill each other amid a sea of gibs for no reason...and I love every second of it!
Games need to step back and realize that it's not all about production values and storytelling and graphics (though these things are important). It's about fun and entertainment, too.
I can agree with the writer at places, but one person's set of ideas for what an FPS should be will be completely different to that of others.
If we can hit that bull's-eye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards... Checkmate.
The article doesn't really say anything interesting. The authors merely express their wishes as players. As an inspiration for game designers, this is more to the point: http://www.theinspiracy.com/Current%20Rules%20Mast er%20List.htm
And here's my favorite game design rule:
In every game there should be a five second goal, a 30 second goal, a 10 minute goal and a 5 hour goal (actual times may vary of course):
5 seconds - see what's behind next corner, shoot an enemy.
30 seconds - get to next floor/building, find key, make something explode, see nice scenery.
10 minutes - get new weapon, encounter new enemy, finish a level.
5 hours - finish the game.
As long as the goals and rewards are enticing enough, it's all fine.
So as far as HL2 goes, was getting the crowbar that late in "half hearted" or not? Because I sure as hell felt the panic of someone chased when running through the apartments completely unarmed while CP stormed the place, and after they've been shooting at you while you frantically looked for an exit from the train yard, it's rather satisfying to club a CP thug to get your first pistol to gun down his buddy. Not too half-hearted if you ask me.
The gunships always felt kind of contrived though, and taking them down was nothing like the immense satisfaction you got from blasting the chopper that had been harrassing you through a good chunk of HL1. Or maybe I'm just jaded.
FPS's in general though are getting really quite old. In virtually all of them, you zip around on perfectly flat surfaces at cheetah speeds shooting with perfect accuracy due to your glass-smooth and unfaltering run, with your main interface to the world being your always-visible gun. Games like Gears of War may not be advancing cliched concepts much, but are at least shaking up the stale control mechanics somewhat. Normally I rail against "console-ification" of games, but I can only welcome these developments.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
It was released in 1999, so it's not quite 10 years, but it's still depressing to think that gameplay hasn't advanced at all since then. I can think of two reasons why: the rise of consoles and the rise of LCD monitors. Console controllers aren't precise enough for Q3 speed gameplay, and LCD monitors are capped at 60Hz (even those that sync to 75Hz resample down to 60Hz) and most have perceptible lag. People who say 60Hz is enough obviously never played a fast FPS at high level. I used to play Q3 on a CRT at 180Hz, with the detail turned down to almost minimum. I never got to pro standards, but I'd kick ass on public servers. Another possibility is that pro-level Q3 is the highest possible achievement for human gaming, and the human brain is simply too slow for anything faster or more complicated.
I always found that Q3 had too many jump pads and required too much of a twitch response.
Q2 has a better pace that results in games with a more strategic feel, especially with a small number of players.
The thing that people forget is that HL2's art direction was amazing. I can't think of another title in recent memory that had a higher level of visual cohesiveness on a reasonable polybudget. For example, darkness consistently equals safety throughout the game, whereas any point you're exposed to sunlight is a location shrouded in danger. This is consistent both internally and externally. No-one, to my knowledge, has followed this color styling, yet it is an effective technique at making the player feel like an unwelcome outcast.
You can see how minimalist this tree really is. They only gave it just enough branches to cover the illusion, but not so many that it holds up to actual inspection. Another shot of said tree, from a more common angle. By not wasting any polys, they really can afford to put more on-screen. Heck, look at leaves. Artificially close, they are a big smear. But from the distance you normally see them, they can stick thousands of these things on screen, and they look beautiful.
Love the look of brick? Notice how in this shot they've burned the bump maps and damage maps and everything into the same texture? The increases the repetition in texture, but if you vary your geometry sufficiently the player will never notice. All they'll notice is a lot more is going on on-screen than they're used to. This technique looks terrible for big-open walls, but Half Life studiosly avoids big open walls within proximity of the player.
They even used a distinct pallete of blacks, muted browns, and light blues. This was far before anyone else was using anything but super-saturated primary colors.
Ignoring any technical accomplishments, this is an achievement of strong visual composition and consistent, solid art direction.
The ______ Agenda
You should _always_ be able to skip cutscenes, particularly if they're longer than about 10 seconds (Here's looking at you, KOTOR2).
10: Thou shalt not have boss battles unless thou are DooM. Completely ruins the immersion factor
9: Thou shalt not force the player to watch long-ass cutscenes. F.E.A.R. did this really well. The few cut scenes were short and sweet, and it went one step further by having an "Interactive Cut scene" in the form of the hallucination sequences.
8: Thou shalt not have more than 3 minutes between huge-ass firefights. Any smaller number of gunfights can take place between, but you need a bunch of guys to shoot or it gets boring and easy.
7: Thou shalt not place too little ammo in a level.
6: Thou shall have intelligent A.I., both friendly and enemy. Again, see F.E.A.R.
5: Thou shalt not force the player to switch weapons to throw a grenade.
4: Thou shalt have plenty of cover available to both you and your enemies.
3: Thou shalt not have jumping puzzles
2: Thou shalt not not have a shotgun in the game. WW2 shooters, I'm looking at you.
1: Thou SHALT NOT have inhumanly-accurate and/or one-hit-instant-death enemy snipers. HALO 2, I'm looking at you.
Q1 was the best of the Quake series, followed by Q3/Q4 and Q2 .. Q4 i thought was just the same as Q3 but with improved graphics .. really seemed that way.
...
I've been bitching up a storm on the Unreal engine forums, about how EVERY game made with Unreal feels like crap compared to Quake
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
Personally I felt that these sequence, while done very well, was more confusing than anything. You were thrust into a plot with little to no warning and immediately expected to understand what was going on and side with these rebels or something that you know little to nothing about against an enemy you also know little to nothing about.
I felt that, compared to the plot of the first game with it's more easily understood "Get out. Oh NOES, they want to to cover it all up! Escape!" theme worked much better at accomplishing the same thing.
While it has some good points there were a few that really felt to be antithetical to the way I prefer to enjoy a good FPS.
First off was the idea that you need to always be under pressure. I acknowledge that some people think this makes a game fun. I remember playing a number of multiplayer mods for Quake where you'd get insta-gibbed if you stood still for too long. Yet I don't like this sort of frantic, don't pay attention to what you're doing and don't plan or think, just move around a lot concept. I like to be able to take a slow, methodical approach to the game. If I think there might be enemies nearby then I'm more likely to hold down the walk key... slink around slowly to keep my noise down and my aim steady and spend my time checking out every corner. I'm just about the only person I know who walked most of the time when I played Sonic the Hedgehog for fear of missing something or running into an enemy accidentally.
Related to this is the idea that you always need multiple ways to get somewhere. While I greatly applaud not having a single forced path and giving the player a degree of freedom I find that when misapplied it can be even more crippling. Give me two or three paths to a destination and I'm likely to go a little bit down one path, checking it out, then stop, turn around, and go back to check out the other path. After I'm done with any fights I'll probably wander back around and be certain I checked out everything along both paths. Not only to avoid having missed any powerups or weapons or such, but because I'll feel a bit cheated if I don't. While I like multiple playthroughs of a game (though I'll gladly play a linear game many, many times, just the same as I'll gladly watch a movie or read a book a good dozen or so times) I want to experience everything I possibly can the first time through. If not, I feel like I'm missing out on something. I want to see all the possible content and not miss a thing. The difference comes when you go beyond just two or three possible paths and begin to make it really open: e.g. Grand Theft Auto or other "sandbox" style games. At that point there isn't really a path except the one you make and I don't worry that I missed something by taking the left path over the right. Sure I'll worry a bit that maybe there was a better way. Maybe I could have snuck around in some other manner, but I'm generally ok in believing that I saw what there was and made my own choices.
Finally, the idea that you need to be thrown right into the action buts against my generally laid-back, methodical method of play. I want to slow down in the beginning. Learn about the world and the characters. Get a chance to test out my weapons a bit. Figure out the lay of the land and get a feel for my new persona. Throwing the player right into the thick of things makes me anxious and ill-prepared. It's an unpleasant feeling that makes me cringe and curl up inside. Then again, I'm the sort who always, always reads the entire manual from cover-to-cover before I even load up a game. Not reading the manual is unthinkable. How else do you know how to play it? How do you know what's going on? There's no room for "just learn as you go and fiddle around with things". Maybe, to a degree, in an adventure game where the rule is to explore (although you should still be taught the basic commands and how the parser/control scheme works and have the stage set for you if it isn't done entirely in-game), but that's a special case.
Ultimately this is only "how to make a better FPS for a specific type of fan". Some of the design ideas are solid, but these are far from the maxims they intend to be.