After readingthis thread and talking about it with my gaming friends, I realized that military themed first person shooter players desire a pretty crazy set of functions.
For example, I loathe the idea of a military themed FPS that lets you get shot and keep on running. Bullets are really lethal in real life and you should be taking cover, not doing stupid stuff, and generally playing like a soldier.
I also think that damage modeling should be more accurate. Surely the technology and processing horsepower exists to allow the games to roughly model the difference between being hit in the legs, arms, torso or head with a nonlethal hit, in those cases.
I think that there should be a component of “when you’re dead, you’re dead”- at least you don’t respawn until the next round, perhaps not for some fixed period of time- 5 or 10 minutes.
I also think that weapon accuracy should be reasonably modeled- none of this shooting someone with a Makarov at 75 yards. I have a Makarov, and let me tell you, that ain’t going to happen except through extreme luck.
Were the ArmA games not so ridiculously buggy, I’d recommend them to you. (I have personal experience with the bugs in ArmA—even after patching the 700 MB version 1.14, but have only read about the ones in ArmA II.) They penalize getting shot, and do an average job of trying to distinguish between torso hits and hits to the limbs. However, they’ve an incredibly clunky interface, they have an aircraft control model that actively hates your guts, and AI pathfinding that is esoteric at best. For multi-player, however, they’re supposed to be great. And multiplayer should get rid of the horribly over-precise aimbot accuracy of AI opponents. Few things killed my immersion like getting headshot at over 150 yds in pitch darkness by an opponent with no night vision, firing a stubby AK-74 once from the hip.
I agree with your wishlist, for the most part.
The Red Orchestra games might be what you’re looking for.
America’s Army did those things ok. Getting shot definitely slows you down, only a few hits kill, and you can bleed out without a medic. Accuracy is pretty poor firing over open sights.
Play “Hardcore” modes in Black Ops. Makes it way easier to kill someone. All guns kill in a couple of shots, snipers are one shot kills.
Also, you don’t always have a mini-map, it only comes on when someone uses their UAV or Blackbird. You don’t have a HUD at the bottom telling you how many bullets you have left, either.
That might help with people grabbing a sniper rifle and sitting on a perch, but the bigger point of campers remain. That won’t stop, for instance, a guy sitting in a corner of a room aiming his FAMAS at the door.
Somebody on youtube suggested a system where everybody appears on the minimap unless they are constantly moving. If you sit in an area for any period of time you start glowing. I could bet behind something like that.
I think the key is to make it look as realistic as possible, but not to make it act that way. For all the CoD franchise’s faults, that seems to be the direction it’s always headed, and correctly IMHO.
My perfect military shooter would basically be ARMA 3, but with the budget of Battlefield 3, a more intuitive UI and control scheme (which they are promising in ARMA 3) and a more robust and user friendly toolset - perhaps with some built in scenarios you can easily modify.
I’m done with corridor shooters that throw buckets of red at your screen and bore you with cut scenes every 2 minutes.
They could include various innocent citizens of all ages, milling about, and if you shoot them you would be suspended from your duties (i.e gaming privileges revoked) while a real-time inquiry took place.
Not a military shooter, but APB (RIP) had civilians and if you were a cop you were supposed to avoid killing them, but sometimes they would walk in front of your car while you were driving down the sidewalk, minding your own business. APB Reloaded is coming out as free to play, btw.
I do play hardcore exclusively. Still, the lack of fear of death remains, due to respawning in 10 seconds- you can do something dumb, and die, and then respawn with no penalty.
One of the gaming friends I mentioned was actually an Army officer recently, and his comment about the games was “Well, people don’t do that shit in real life, because they’re afraid of dying.”
I’m all for a system that introduces a certain fear of death, and that minimizes the impact of dumbasses who camp lamely. Sniping’s one thing, but waiting in a room for someone to walk by in the hallway is just terrible game playing.