So I played the “Battlefront” Beta on PS4, and I was not impressed. The game still hasn’t taken any steps to resolve the same basic issues that have plagued all multiplayer games for the last twenty years. You’d think two decades would be long enough to figure some of these things out, but I guess not…
(1) Guns make no sense. I have yet to see a single game where snipers worked the way they do in real life. They end up being more like what the real life Army would call the squad’s “designated marksman.” And the problems are just like every other game: The game gives you no concealment, the sniper rifle can’t kill the enemy, etc. etc. It’s just another weapon thrown in to give the players variety, rather than give them the chance to behave the way a real sniper would.
(2) There is no “squad automatic” role. The game gives you a heavy repeating blaster that is weaker than other guns and basically useless at long ranges. Again, why? In real life, the squad organizes around its automatic weapon. It is the unit’s anchor and all movement happens in relation to where the machine gunner needs to be. In video games, the designers don’t want any one weapon to be universally “better” than any other, so they nerf the automatics to make them useless and underpowered. In “Star Wars” I frequently had occasions where I would direct enfilade automatic weapon fire on an enemy group approaching in a narrow draw. In real life, this would produce 90% casualties. In “Star Wars,” 0. This is a big part of why these games are unplayable - Tactics that should be invincible in real life are useless in the game.
(3) With that… What is my role in the squad? Who is my squad leader? What is my squad’s role in the platoon? Does anyone know? Does anyone care? Would it make any difference at all? Games like this aren’t team games. They’re glorified deathmatches. A “Team” is a unit of people that work together, and each person has a specific role in the plan. “Star Wars” teams are disorganized mobs of individuals who all do their own thing, and the best they can hope for is for the mob to converge on a specific objective point.
I guess the frustration isn’t so much that the game doesn’t make sense, but rather that these are the same problems we’ve had for two decades and nobody bothers trying to solve them.
Realism often isn’t fun. Snipers in shooter games like this can already be annoying (since it’s easy to get killed by them without ever seeing them), getting shot at from a sniper half a mile away sounds even less fun.
As Kinthalis says, though, there are certainly games which are much more tactics-heavy.
At the ranges a sniper would operate at, he would be a single pixel on everyone else’s screen. With any form of camouflage he’d be literally one among millions. With supersonic ammunition, his kills would outrace even the sound of his gunshots. Add laser weaponry that eliminates the need for ballistic calculations…
Yeah, getting killed by one would be kinda hard to make “fun” in a multiplayer environment.
As for squad automatic weapons, yes, they are consequently misrepresented. Again, this is a sacrifice on the altar of fun and balance. In games, they’re mostly used to keep peoples’ heads down and block chockepoints.
It comes down to the fact that games need to be balanced and “fair”, or you’re just going to have everyone playing the most overpowered class with the most overpowered weapon and 90% of your development was a waste of time. While war and real weapons development and tactics of course aim at creating the most brutally devastating advantages possible because that leads to things like “winning” and “not getting killed.”