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[QUOTE="Birdy09"]
[QUOTE="Mark36111"]
First, I'm not even sure what it means for a FPS to be "shallow." As a previous poster said, in the end, all shooters boil down to pointing a reticle at enemies and pressing a button. As an academic exercise, however, I'll list the gameplay mechanics that Halo popularized, and you can point out to me which are shallow, and why:
-Recharging Health - A double edged sword, improves "Run and Gun" however makes camping alot more profitable and substainable, ontop of this it removes the subtle middle line of "tension" "Thrill" and "Survival" most of the older ones made you earn every aditional kill, while others like Quake and UT would force you to be nimble around the map to actually earn your kill streaks by topping up. Nowadays its just run n gun or hardcore camp, its ok youve been shot up, your magically regenerate without penatly for your lack of positioning, reflexes or tactical play.
To me, recharging health is great because it makes sure every encounter begins on an even playing field. For instance, say in a 1v1 game, player "A" is a better player than player "B." On the first encounter, A kills B, but B manages to take 70% of A's health. In the next encounter, the same result will occur with A killing B if health recharges. However, without recharging health, B can take advantage of A's low health, and will kill A even though he is an inferior player. Recharging health takes away easy, low-health kills.
This feature is considered a dumbed down one because it makes going on long killstreaks easier. You think an A on B fight is fair because their health is even, but A already killed C so it is A vs B and C. Team mentality vs Individual mentality there for ya.
-Dedicated Grenade throw button Happens too quickly, especially in games that try to brag that they are realistic, if there was some accuracy to time held mechanic then I would agree more to it.... but its just instant throw with the same accuracy everytime, not only unrealistic but as CoD4 and Halo showed... makes grenades too easy and dominent, whereas they were treated as skilled deployments in older shooters that were used only at tactical times... (or at least, only scored tactical kills" as apposed to chucking them at every oppurtunity.
You'll find in Halo that skilled players use grenades exactly as you describe. The only ones who spam are noobs. As admitted by Bungie, grenades were overpowered in the Reach beta, but they've already been nerfed. The dedicated grenade button adds a wrinkle to traditional FPS gameplay, so it can't be accused of dumbing Halo down, even if you don't like it.
Having 'spammable' grenades and that are instant, with same accuracy regardless of movement or pressure, or cooked grenades removes tactical decisions. There are still some tactical decisions to be made as you indicated when you mentioned the difference between a noob and skilled players, however there were additional skills required to use the traditional **** grenade that required foresight planning and making a hard choice of being able to shoot or throw grenades at any given moment.
-Dedicated melee button Same issue as Grenades, too fast, too accurate, 1 hit killing .... because every slash while sprinting should be fatal? nah... to compensate for those that just want to run around again, back attack maybe .... but the way Halo and CoD lundge at the target is ridiculously accurate, long ranged and fatal (though 2 hits for halo) ... have a look on Halo 3 website, its been ages since I played buy a goo 30-40% of kills were melee back then ... in a shooter... another big portion grenades, and then finally the battle rifle.
First, Melee hits are not one hit kills. They take two hits to kill with a three second delay between hits, by which time any decent player would have already killed you. Melee hits are used by good players situationally: either for stealth kills from behind, or as a close quarters finisher after already inflicting weapon damage. Like the grenade button, the melee button adds yet another layer to traditional FPS gameplay.
He did say that Halo melee attacks are 2 hits, it is in parenthesis after fatal. My problem with melee is simple, it is an excuse for people cannot aim at close range. That is it's sole purpose. People freak out and cant hit at close range in most shooters, so people started giving them melee attacks that auto-hit for oddly high damage as a substitute. I can understand the option to hit, but not as a substitute for a loaded gun. Melee should be the option once you have exhausted a clip and your target isn't finished, or if you snuck up on your opponent and don't want to give away your position when you take them out (UAVs broke this anyway).
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Mark36111
Well its personal opinion to some degree? but ok I'l humour you :)
I'd like to add some of my own?
Really Slow movement speed - i get shocked on how ofte people miss on Halo, everyone moves so slow, even when jumping.....
What does this have to do with a game being shallow. Could be a function of the skill of the players you've encountered, the inherent level of inacuracy of analog sticks, or both.
Why does this make a game shallow? It is easier to shoot someone moving slow... pretty simple.
No sprint - A simple mechanic like Lean, yet adds so much to the skill of shooters.
Sprint is in Reach. I don't think it necessarily adds skill, though. Sure, hitting a sprinting opponent is more difficult, but sprinting also makes it easier for losing players to escape times they'd otherwise be killed. The effect cancels out.
I don't follow your logic on effects canceling out, looks more like doubling up an advantage to me.
No lean - same as above.
Kind of nitpicking. A game contoller only has a certain number buttons, and leaning isn't sufficiently important to justify wasting any of them.
Lean isn't that important, next subject.
No Prone - Same as above
Again, nitpicking. Prone wouldn't even make sense in the context of a Halo game, since your character is wearing thousands of pounds of armor. You'd also get murdered instantly by grenades due to your immobility.
Hence why dumbing down grenades removes tactical play. Lack of prone these days is a result in the reduction of tactical play. Since so many other features have geared games to be 'Run and Gun' holding still becomes a bad idea.
Half-assed-mini-game-modes - the stupid mixture of mini games like king of the hill , oddball and domination, something so much more interesting could be made.
There are 17 playlists on Halo 3 matchmaking (link). If you don't like objective games, you can easily find something else.
I think what he is saying is the current game types are simply deathmatches centered around some object X... where X can be your flag, bomb, zone, whatever and what he would like is some tactical objective. Again this simplicity is a result of dumbing games down.
Forced Matchmaking - Great, but at least give us the option to have our own servers?
You can make custom games. Not sure what the complaint here is.
It is a matter of Peer to Peer vs Dedicated Servers... I could write an essay on that topic and the pros and cons of each, but I am lazy and will let you do the research.
Most of what I have to add involve reducing the need to be good at aiming. Which is dumbing down a game because what makes shooting hard is hitting your target fast and accurately... aka aiming.
I will add the following:
UAVs/Radars/Position Update - This is a feature used to casualize play. Instead of having to pay attention to where people are killed, communicate, listen to your surroundings, or pay attention to what is going on right in front of your face, devs are giving players consistent position updates of their enemies, allowing even the weakest of players to get easy pre-fire kills (kills where you come around shooting, or the intent of shooting a specific enemy before you have seen them). This also forces players to be more mobile, encourages more run and gun, and is yet another hindrance to tactical play.
Auto-Aims/Aim-Assists - Auto-aim. Simply makes it way easier to aim. That is a pretty self-explanatory way to dumb down a shooter since part of a shooter is to shoot, and the challenge of shooting is aiming.
Lack of Recoil - Guns in today's shooters simply do not recoil off target. In games like Halo and CoD, it is possible to put every bullet in the magazine of an automatic weapon into a target of average engagement distance without missing or letting go of the trigger. That... is... absurd... of course this becomes necessary with the above (auto-aim) since recoiling off a target where accuracy isn't an issue would result in really clunky controls.
Headshots - If weapons had a reasonable amount of recoil than I suppose this arguement has more merit, but what happened to head shots being a one-shot kill? No not just with a sniper rifle, with anything that fires a bullet. Usually when a metal object penetrates your skull and enters your brain you die... just saying. Making headshots simply a half-health damage modifier like what has happened recently takes more focus off of the ability to aim.
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