RANDOM VIDEO GAME NEWS

[Majek]

Care to name examples? Most good shooters means nothing.

Edited July 10, 2017 by Majek

[Fenixp]

So you are saying shooters on a controller with one shot kills is rewarding ?

 

Much more so, considering aiming with a pad is a fair bit more difficult than with a mouse. And whatever you use to play the game, enemies that feel bullet spongy just don't feel good to fight against, regardless of how do their hitboxes work.

 

I don't see a connection with RPGs, the term doesn't mean anything anymore. Of course a lot of them do that thing where they give you tiny stat increases after you have scored your 1000th kill. just to keep you playing. You know, grind unlocks that they call 'RPG elements'

The connection to RPGs isn't really relevant per se, but the fact that there are statistics to increase. Whenever you can make your guns more powerful, it's important to allow you to actually feel the difference - in other words, enemies need to be spongy so that there is room for statistical improvement. An issue that many modern shooters now dodge by only allowing you to unlock upgrades which don't directly influence damage per shot. Edited July 10, 2017 by Fenixp

[Keyrock]

 

 

Is there even a game out there that wasn't designed with damagesponge enemies?

 

I've heard Metro increases everyone's DPS on higher difficulty levels.

 

 

Same for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. fwiw.

 

I find that a much better way to increase difficulty than the much more often used alternative of more enemies and/or enemies that have much more health (which only adds tedium, IMHO).  Making combat more immediately lethal, in both directions, and making supplies harder to come by keeps tension super high as every bullet counts and you're always just a slip up or a stray bullet or two away from death.

Edited July 10, 2017 by Keyrock

[Gorgon]

It only works if the core mechanics are rock solid though. I kinda suspect that that isn't the case for the Division. I don't see it working well with a controller simply because of the wonkiness of the thumb stick for aiming. Really you should play to the strengths of either input devices. Even though some people may enjoy that, it's not something many would design a game around because it's so much harder to get right. So you add more time to the average encounter with the bullet sponge thing and small mistakes are more or less ignored.

 

Ubisoft doesn't want players to rage quit because they aren't good enough.

 

When I say that I haven't played a shooter with a controller of course that doesn't mean that I haven't tried and concluded that wow this is not the right tool for the job several times. As anyone with a choice would.

 

[Fenixp]

So you add more time to the average encounter with the bullet sponge thing and small mistakes are more or less ignored.

First of all, your argumentation assumes that majority of FPS games designed to be played with a mouse sport major emphasis on headshots, which quite simply isn't true. They tend to have more emphasis on mobility, but that's slowly changing as designers are getting more comfortable with the idea of creating FPS sporting full controller support (which is why we got 2016 DOOM for instance, which most certainly does contain a ton of it)

 

Ubisoft doesn't want players to rage quit because they aren't good enough.

Secondly, and that's quite important, no FPS designer really wants players to feel like their guns are shooting peas. It's funny that you'd mention Ubisoft as Far Cry 3 and 4 do actually contain rather powerful headshots (in fact I'm pretty sure majority of enemies just drop dead when hit in the head with any weapon.) Regardless, spongy enemies mean the exact opposite of easier and more forgiving game as they... Well... Take more bullets to die and create longer and more exhausting combat scenarios.

 

When I say that I haven't played a shooter with a controller of course that doesn't mean that I haven't tried and concluded that wow this is not the right tool for the job several times.

Your wrists strongly disagree :-P Edited July 10, 2017 by Fenixp

[Lexx]

Remember the Red Dead Redemption 2 screenshots from a few months back that turned out not to be from RDR2? Here's a first gameplay video:

[Katphood]

Playing shooters with a mouse and keyboard is more fun but playing games with a controller is a whole lot more comfortable. I prefer playing games with a controller unless it's Red Orchestra or some PC exclusive. 

[Majek]

 

Same for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. fwiw.

I find that a much better way to increase difficulty than the much more often used alternative of more enemies and/or enemies that have much more health (which only adds tedium, IMHO).  Making combat more immediately lethal, in both directions, and making supplies harder to come by keeps tension super high as every bullet counts and you're always just a slip up or a stray bullet or two away from death.

 

Well i want to hit what i am at. Wasn't the case many times in Stalker because of it's design.  No wonder so many mods were made to try to improve the original games ...

 

[Bartimaeus]

Yeah, Stalker's guns were a little wonky - the devs were definitely trying to "RPG"-ize them (i.e. provide different tiers of weapons by making some unrealistically weaker than others). The game only becomes better if you get a "realistic weapons" mod on top of it, and can then appreciate how well the bullet physics engine works, especially when you realize that most other shooters don't bother with bullet physics to begin with and just make almost everything hitscan.

[Gorgon]

Speaking of head shots I liked how it works in Hitman where taking out with headshots drops people in body armor, but when they start to converge on you and supress you the window for hitting those headshots gets really really tiny. 

[Malcador]

Shame more games don't model suppression.

[Zoraptor]

Yeah, Stalker's guns were a little wonky - the devs were definitely trying to "RPG"-ize them (i.e. provide different tiers of weapons by making some unrealistically weaker than others). The game only becomes better if you get a "realistic weapons" mod on top of it, and can then appreciate how well the bullet physics engine works..

 

Really disagree there, though I agree with the cut bit.

 

'Realistic weapon' mods in Stalker are a misnomer in many ways. If it were 'realistic' to always hit where you aimed at everyone would be White Death and there would be no point having shooting medals at the Olympics or specialist snipers. You miss what you aim at all (well, a lot of) the time in reality despite thinking that you've aimed perfectly. To get an actual realistic result from shooting you need either bullet spray or gun wobble.

 

The sort of thing you sometimes get with bullets going off at 30 degree angles or being unable to fire some guns at all due to skill limitations which come from RPG mechanics in fp perspective is stupid, but that doesn't happen in Stalker anyway.

[Azdeus]

 

Yeah, Stalker's guns were a little wonky - the devs were definitely trying to "RPG"-ize them (i.e. provide different tiers of weapons by making some unrealistically weaker than others). The game only becomes better if you get a "realistic weapons" mod on top of it, and can then appreciate how well the bullet physics engine works..

 

Really disagree there, though I agree with the cut bit.

 

'Realistic weapon' mods in Stalker are a misnomer in many ways. If it were 'realistic' to always hit where you aimed at everyone would be White Death and there would be no point having shooting medals at the Olympics or specialist snipers. You miss what you aim at all (well, a lot of) the time in reality despite thinking that you've aimed perfectly. To get an actual realistic result from shooting you need either bullet spray or gun wobble.

 

The sort of thing you sometimes get with bullets going off at 30 degree angles or being unable to fire some guns at all due to skill limitations which come from RPG mechanics in fp perspective is stupid, but that doesn't happen in Stalker anyway.

 

 

True, but since there is no real wobble and some AR's deviate with something like 10 MOA at 100 metres...

[Agiel]

Well this is unfortunate:

 

Icewind Dale 2 can't be 'Enhanced' because the source code is lost.

[Bartimaeus]

 

Yeah, Stalker's guns were a little wonky - the devs were definitely trying to "RPG"-ize them (i.e. provide different tiers of weapons by making some unrealistically weaker than others). The game only becomes better if you get a "realistic weapons" mod on top of it, and can then appreciate how well the bullet physics engine works..

 

Really disagree there, though I agree with the cut bit.

 

'Realistic weapon' mods in Stalker are a misnomer in many ways. If it were 'realistic' to always hit where you aimed at everyone would be White Death and there would be no point having shooting medals at the Olympics or specialist snipers. You miss what you aim at all (well, a lot of) the time in reality despite thinking that you've aimed perfectly. To get an actual realistic result from shooting you need either bullet spray or gun wobble.

 

The sort of thing you sometimes get with bullets going off at 30 degree angles or being unable to fire some guns at all due to skill limitations which come from RPG mechanics in fp perspective is stupid, but that doesn't happen in Stalker anyway.

 

 

Guns in, at least Shadow of Chernobyl, were just *absurd* on the low-end of things, though. Shotguns that shot pellets at impossible (and ridiculously inaccurate) angles, bullets coming out of rifle barrels at variances just not possible (you say this didn't happen in Stalker, but I think it did in at least ShoC with the vanilla weapons), bullet velocities that just totally and utterly wrong (they were unrealistically slow by a bit, perhaps to show off the bullet physics, but it was just too much - it's silly that you can visibly track the path of every bullet, even ones you're shooting at near point blank range), RPMs that were just flat-out incorrect for some weapons, etc. If they wanted to simulate more of the difficulties of shooting, I would say they probably would've been better off using the more typical route of adding a little bit of sway* - not a lot, not nearly as ridiculous as some other games go, but just a little bit - while also making bullets a little bit erratic mid-flight. It doesn't make sense for bullets to immediately and visibly verge off in seemingly random directions right as they come out of the barrel.

 

*I personally don't like gun swaying, but S.T.A.L.K.E.R. isn't a competitive FPS, and it's too easy to, as you said, become basically the White Death in a game like this without any handicaps, and so I'd be O.K. with just a little, to at least make quick-scoping harder. An option for it, at least, for those of us pretty good at FPSes wouldn't be remiss. I already disable crosshairs and the minimap when I play, so I wouldn't mind a little more difficulty.

Edited July 10, 2017 by Bartimaeus

[Bartimaeus]

Well this is unfortunate:

 

Icewind Dale 2 can't be 'Enhanced' because the source code is lost.

 

Sweet baby Moses, Interplay/Black Isle and BioWare were disastrously incompetent at record-keeping. None of the original assets of these games were preserved, and now they don't even have the source code anymore? There'll never be any possibility of a real sound re-mastering or a real resolution/graphical upgrade for any these games because of their total incompetency, unless one were to start over from scratch. I would've expected at least BioWare to properly preserve the BG assets, but no - at least they kept their source codes, though, unlike Interplay.

Edited July 10, 2017 by Bartimaeus

[Zoraptor]

 

 

Guns in, at least Shadow of Chernobyl, were just *absurd* on the low-end of things, though. Shotguns that shot pellets at impossible (and ridiculously inaccurate) angles, bullets coming out of rifle barrels at variances just not possible (you say this didn't happen in Stalker, but I think it did in at least ShoC with the vanilla weapons), bullet velocities that just totally and utterly wrong (they were unrealistically slow by a bit, perhaps to show off the bullet physics, but it was just too much - it's silly that you can visibly track the path of every bullet, even ones you're shooting at near point blank range), RPMs that were just flat-out incorrect for some weapons, etc.

 

 

If you want a sense of progression then the low end weapons have to be low end and the G36 you've taken more than half the game to earn has to be better than the L85 you picked up a third of the way in. If your cordon found AKSU hits its reticle centre every shot there's little practical difference between it and an Abakan. Stalker is a fairly 'realistic' fps ('verisimilitude' is as nearly always a better term, since very few games are 'realistic' in the accepted sense) but it certainly isn't a simulation and shouldn't aim to be one. It's been years since I played SOC unmodded*, like most I suspect, so I cannot really comment definitively on how the weapons behave in vanilla but then again iirc vanilla has Vintars/ G37s/ Obokans etc instead of their real names anyway, so some deviation from performance could reasonably be expected. And when it comes right down to it the G36 is objectively better than the L85, it's just in stuff that is hard to simulate accurately in a game unless you want to go full ARMA.

 

The only round I found with really appreciable bullet drop and obvious visible bullets was the 9x39, and it's low velocity in reality.

 

*I've only played CS and CoP with just gun name mods though, and never hit anything I'd consider genuinely odd there.

[Bartimaeus]

Verisimilitude is a good word to use. When I first played it, Stalker worked for me. It did not work for other people that I know, though - with various complaints of the damage of weapons and especially accuracy being off. I understood why: trying to use a knife to stealth-kill everyone in the first bandit park is quite possibly more enjoyable than trying to use the vanilla Makarov to do it instead (...and stealth, and the knife, are both quite wonky in Stalker). God help you if you try to use the sawn-off shotgun instead - the gun that makes you think the AI is cheating every time they hit you with it because there's no way you could ever hit them. It's painful to use early weapons, and it's only once you start getting into the higher end weapons that they start approaching how you might expect a gun to actually perform (...and even then, bullet velocity and drop is still much worse than it should be). As for the names of weapons, as I understand it, that's for licensing purposes (devs did not want to pay for the rights to use the real weapon names).

 

As for the sense of progression...I think having decent gunplay that the player can enjoy is more important than any sense of progression, personally. Don't want people to quit your game because you made your MP5, a tried-and-true powerful (and historic!) submachine gun, a ridiculous inaccurate pea-shooting piece of garbage. If you want to use an AK or an Abakan (the Abakan is usually my favorite gun in so-called 'realistic weapon' mods for the Stalker series, alongside the SIG 550), then I think you should able to. The vanilla Stalker versions are just awful, though.

Edited July 11, 2017 by Bartimaeus

[Blodhemn]

Verisimilitude is a good word to use. When I first played it, Stalker worked for me. It did not work for other people that I know, though - with various complaints of the damage of weapons and especially accuracy being off. I understood why: trying to use a knife to stealth-kill everyone in the first bandit park is quite possibly more enjoyable than trying to use the vanilla Makarov to do it instead (...and stealth, and the knife, are both quite wonky in Stalker). God help you if you try to use the sawn-off shotgun instead - the gun that makes you think the AI is cheating every time they hit you with it because there's no way you could ever hit them. It's painful to use early weapons, and it's only once you start getting into the higher end weapons that they start approaching how you might expect a gun to actually perform (...and even then, bullet velocity and drop is still much worse than it should be). As for the names of weapons, as I understand it, that's for licensing purposes (devs did not want to pay for the rights to use the real weapon names).

 

As for the sense of progression...I think having decent gunplay that the player can enjoy is more important than any sense of progression, personally. Don't want people to quit your game because you made your MP5, a tried-and-true powerful (and historic!) submachine gun, a ridiculous inaccurate pea-shooting piece of garbage. If you want to use an AK or an Abakan (the Abakan is usually my favorite gun in so-called 'realistic weapon' mods for the Stalker series, alongside the SIG 550), then I think you should able to. The vanilla Stalker versions, are just awful, though.

Lol! That shotgun was awful. I tried some sneaking, as you have to in spots, got around the enemy, unloaded the shotgun point blank into the back of an enemy's head, he immediately turns around, unloads half a clip into me and I'm dead. I had to quit the game at that point and pick it up later. "Realism" in art turns out to create it's own rules of reality. Mostly, it just misses the mark for me.

[Katphood]

All 3 Stalker games got an update on Steam so you might want to see if your mods are still working...

Edited July 11, 2017 by Katphood

[Azdeus]

All 3 Stalker games got an update on Steam so you might want to see if your mods are still working...

 

Good thing I don't have that virus atleast.

[SonicMage117]

 

Most of the reviews I've seen for The Division were pretty negative, though.

 

Which is a shame, because it did a lot of things right. It had some big flaws, but it also did some creative stuff that made it the closest thing to an engaging shooter MMO I've ever played.

It started out rough but is now some sort of gem. The ratings have gotten much better since the initial release.

 

I think alot of the hate was just because it's Ubisoft and people love to hate Ubisoft as well so that fact doesn't help.

Care to name examples? Most good shooters means nothing.

Why bother to name examples, it's not like naming games from a genre is going to suddenly convince you they're good lol

 

I'd give a list but I don't expect someone won't argue they aren't good - especially those who haven't played them or given them a chance because that's how people on this forum seem to be so I'll just avoid that altogether lol

Yeah, Stalker's guns were a little wonky - the devs were definitely trying to "RPG"-ize them (i.e. provide different tiers of weapons by making some unrealistically weaker than others). The game only becomes better if you get a "realistic weapons" mod on top of it, and can then appreciate how well the bullet physics engine works, especially when you realize that most other shooters don't bother with bullet physics to begin with and just make almost everything hitscan.

That's what usually tends to turn a good fps into a bad one, when devs try to turn it into an rpg (with the exception of Borderlands series which does it right). I find the best fps are the simple gunning ones, ironically those are the ones that feature the best stories as well. Edited July 11, 2017 by SonicMage117

[Fenixp]

Why bother to name examples, it's not like naming games from a genre is going to suddenly convince you they're good lol

It backs up an argument with context, making it easier to understand - regardless of whether you agree with it or not.

 

with the exception of Borderlands series which does it right

I'm pretty sure Borderlands is pretty much the definition of spongy enemies (unless you outlevel an area)

[SonicMage117]

 

Why bother to name examples, it's not like naming games from a genre is going to suddenly convince you they're good lol

It backs up an argument with context, making it easier to understand - regardless of whether you agree with it or not.

Why is that?

 

Why on earth would I feel like I owe people on a forum answers to validate my opinion or defend it? Especially when I've seen enough from this forum (and other forums) to know that it's not worth it.

[Keyrock]

I'm pretty sure Borderlands is pretty much the definition of spongy enemies (unless you outlevel an area)

Agreed, it's one of the things that made me hate that game, the others being the crappy gunplay and the fact that while there are a billion different guns, 99.9% of them are garbage. It's too bad because I love the setting, characters, and humor, but I just can't enjoy a shooter where the shooting feels so bad.