"Consoles are not responsible for the decline of the shooter"

[Average Manatee]

There is no real functional distinction with regards to gameplay. The shield is just another name for 80% of your health that happens to regenerate, while the remaining 20% doesn't and can only be restored with medkits. The only difference is damage to the shield doesn't spill over into your other health pool once broken, unless it's explosive damage. At least from what I gather. I'm not a Halo expert but I know enough of the decline.

The shield in Halo 1 is not nearly as strong as health. Like I said its worth more like 20%. If you are at 1 health then full shields means you can take, like, 1 hit and not die on Legendary.

Also Shield/Health have different resistance to weapons, so the balance remains relevant. Shields are strong against hitscan weapons while Health is strong against the plasma/fire/etc. Which is part of the reason why the shield is almost meaningless on Legendary, since your enemies almost all use Plasma and can kill you in the blink of an eye without health.

Garbage excuse also used to justify regen health in a singleplayer game. The solution? good ammo and health management so you don't have to backtrack 10 mins. See some rockets that you can't pick up due to full ammo? Use the rocket launcher for a bit on some nearby tough enemies and then back track for 10 seconds to pick it up.

There's a reason why most linear games tend to simply give you tons more ammo then you'll ever need, thereby making ammo scarcity an irrelevant mechanic beyond the absolute immediate needs.

The reason is called shit design. There are untold amounts of linear games that don't bombard you with health and ammo. I seem to recall in super mario bros backtracking for health not even being an option as you don't know which block is health or not until you smack your head on it, so you inadvertently ending wasting a mushroom here and there.
If you have to backtrack 10mins, stop being shit; git gud fag. If you're playing linear games with shit design, stop.

If any game lets you cap out on the strongest ammo then its guilty of "simply giving you more ammo then you need". So your solution to the problem of backtracking is to make ammo management meaningless by giving you more ammo then you ever need. Great solution.

If you want to name a linear FPS with large levels that still harshly punishes wasting ammo, please do so. Hell, I'd go so far as to say that no FPS has really done ammo management properly. Even in Doom the observation was made that unless you intentionally gimped yourself to start each level with a pistol it was way too easy.

 

[Ash]

"If any game lets you cap out on the strongest ammo then its guilty of "simply giving you more ammo then you need". So your solution to the problem of backtracking is to make ammo management is to give you more ammo then you ever need. Great solution."

So why would you ever need to backtrack 10 freaking minutes for rockets in the first place if you didn't have full ammo and could pick it up back when you first encountered it?

If you want to name a linear FPS with large levels that still harshly punishes misuse of ammo, please do so.

Where does harsh punishment come into this? You could have fallback melee or other special attacks or solutions. Nonetheless, this is what survival horrors are, usually minus the linear part which is not an important distinction. If anything linear is better for this "problem". as it's a beeline backtrack back to your ammo rather than a maze of directions to go in and get "lost". Don't tell me you often get lost in old school FPS games too? The only FPS that truly made me lost was the first two Turok games, because they're a clusterfuck mindfuck, but are inclined regardless. I'd rather obscure not very well sign-posted level design as opposed to modern shitfests.

 

[Carrion]

Even if you think Half Life was decline, it certainly wasn't the start of it. At the very least Jedi Knight beat it by a year with its immersive worlds, mostly linear gameplay, cutscenes, etc. And I can't think of anyone who thinks Jedi Knight 2 was decline.

Yeah, I love it how "immersive" is nowadays some it-must-be-shit magic word when back in the 90's companies like Looking Glass were using it as a central guideline for their game design.

Half-Life was probably the most influential FPS since Doom, and most of the "decline" features can be traced back to it, but I think that it's also one of the more misunderstood games out there. Even Valve didn't seem to "get it" entirely when they made HL2. Almost every game that tried to copy its storytelling or level design failed miserably, and eventually its worst parts became prevalent in shooters while almost no one managed to capture the things it did well. HL1 was fairly linear, yeah, but it was never just a corridor, had some pretty clever layouts and some bigger areas that required exploration and backtracking, and its attempt to tell its simple story unintrusively through gameplay rather than cutscenes was commendable, even if later games ruined this by completely missing the point (even HL2 had to occasionally lock you into a room for five minutes to feed you some exposition, which made the whole "always in first person" thing seem like an awful limitation rather than a strength). Half-Life also had features that could be genuinely considered incline, like its AI, which was rivaled by very few games, most notably Unreal. It had a large number of different weapons, some of them very exotic and unconventional, lots of different enemy types that all behaved in a unique way, a very detailed, believeable location in the form of Black Mesa and another location in the form of Xen, which was a very alien place... and the things that later games took from it were shooting guys in a corridor and scripted events interrupting your progress every five minutes. Fucking hell. Then again, Half-Life also influenced games like Deus Ex, so it's not all black and white.

Compromises so great that regen health, two weapon limits, cinematic cutscenes, QTEs, excessive "realism"-focused design, banal linear as fuck level design, and objective markers have to be introduced? No. We're talking scaling back of graphics, maybe a change to the weapon swap system, mostly negligible shit like that.

Memory limitations and checkpoint-based save systems have naturally had an effect on level design. QTEs as we know them originated on consoles, and off the top of my head I can't think of a PC shooter that had them. Health regen and two-weapon limits I already explained earlier, and yes, I do think consoles had a hand it that, especially seeing how cover mechanics and health regen were introduced (or at least popularized) by console games.

Decline is all-encompassing, and consoles are one part of that puzzle. Not the only part, of course, but it'd be naïve to ignore their influence.

 

[sullynathan]

Crysis is a pretty good game. Graphics were and are irrelevant to it being good. Large areas that you can approach in any way you want + lots of destructibility make it good, and it still hasn't really been beat since. As far as (semi-) realistic shooters go, its among the top.

Crysis is a game that just has large open swaths of land with absolutely nothing to do in them but to shoot at enemies with its boring shooting mechanics and dumb AI. Your suit aren't op enough to give you a great feeling while playing.

There is no semblance of level design and all I was just doing is clear here and move forward in this line in a large world.

It's biggest crime was being boring.

 

[Ash]

Memory limitations and checkpoint-based save systems have naturally had an effect on level design.

Speaking from experience you are, of course. There are hordes of console games that feature expansive labyrinthine level design, as well as open world console games with checkpoints. For the worthwhile ones you've got to look into the past, naturally. Banal level design is a modern manifestation of commercialization (something that applies to the industry as a whole - not to be blamed on some hardware superior to what PCs were back in the 90s on a technical level), as is the majority of the decline.

QTEs as we know them originated on consoles

Granted.

Health regen and two-weapon limits I already explained earlier, and yes, I do think consoles had a hand it that, especially seeing how cover mechanics and health regen were introduced (or at least popularized) by console games.

Popularized by sellout PC devs: Epic/Gears of War and Bungie/Halo respectively.

but it'd be naïve to ignore their influence.

There is influence, but I don't believe for second it was their hardware or native developers (i.e the Japanese or western console shooter developers of ye olde days) to be the primary reason for the terrible decline of game design. Every initial impactful instance of shooter game design decline was PC-born, or a sellout PC devs move to the console market looking to cash in with aggressive marketing and hell incarnate decline design.
The only native console shooter popularizing a decline feature that comes to mind was Resident Evil 4 with its QTEs.

I'm only arguing because it's profound to me that consoles get the blame when the shooter decline was clearly primarily homebrew. I don't give a shit about consoles these days. They're shit PCs with little to offer.

Of course, a big part of the problem is the console audience. It being larger, and with demographics of a lower age group, it was more susceptible to manipulation from the decline bringers. I doubt Epic's Gears of War would have saw much success if it was PC-exclusive, but then again take a look at that top-selling PC games of all time list...

HL1 was fairly linear, yeah, but....and its attempt to tell its simple story unintrusively through gameplay rather than cutscenes was commendable

HL gets credited with what Duke Nukem 3D and System shock 1 did first. Granted though, HL's environmental storytelling was more elaborate than both. Maybe. System shock 1 was pretty elaborate for its time.

I'm almost certain Looking Glass had some influence on Valve. Gabe Newell and some LG devs were buddies.

 

[Carrion]

Banal level design is a modern manifestation of commercialization (something that applies to the industry as a whole - not to be blamed on some hardware superior to what PCs were back in the 90s on a technical level), as is the majority of the decline.

You can't release big budget games that look like they were from the 90's. Gotta spend some of those resources on graphics too if you want to sell your game. This is not exclusive to consoles, of course.

Popularized by sellout PC devs: Epic/Gears of War and Bungie/Halo respectively.

PC devs start to design games for consoles instead of the PC, decline immediately follows... Kind of like that thing I've been talking about the whole time.

 

[Ash]

Kind of like that thing I've been talking about the whole time.

Yes, and blaming the hardware for it rather than exclusively the developers that had full intentions to commercialize with garbage design of its own league on entirely unprecedented levels. Gears of War has to be the dumbest shooter ever made. At the time I had never seen something on that level of decline be so successful. The campaign plot is the most dude-bro meatheaded shit,even Duke Nukem 3D had more depth and character, and the gameplay is totally on rails and behind cover.

edit: removed incorrect info
edit2: inb4 people start saying Gears of War was a good game next.

There was also that shit Deus Ex cash-in attempt pure-FPS, Project Snowblind. Certain PC FPS devs were relentless in their pursuit of the $$$ and their lack of artistic integrity. Not that many people appreciate the artistic merits of the shooter in general...but we clearly do. the art and craft of their fantastic gameplay and level design, once upon a time.

Only thing I want to know is how much of a hand did the publishers have in it. Probably a lot.

You can't release big budget games that look like they were from the 90's. Gotta spend some of those resources on graphics too if you want to sell your game. This is not exclusive to consoles, of course.

good graphics and good level design are not mutually exclusive...you know that. Hell, Dishonored (a game I'm not particularly fond of, but it was OK) is an example of good detail and good level design in tandem. As in Immersive Sim it's nothing particularly notable though. And yeah, it's graphics weren't cutting edge on a technical level, but it placed high level emphasis on detail-packed levels alongside somewhat engaging level design.

 

[Average Manatee]

"If any game lets you cap out on the strongest ammo then its guilty of "simply giving you more ammo then you need". So your solution to the problem of backtracking is to make ammo management is to give you more ammo then you ever need. Great solution."

So why would you ever need to backtrack 10 freaking minutes for rockets in the first place if you didn't have full ammo and could pick it up back when you first encountered it?

Because you ran out and didn't find it earlier, obviously.

If you want to name a linear FPS with large levels that still harshly punishes misuse of ammo, please do so.

Where does harsh punishment come into this? You could have fallback melee or other special attacks or solutions. Nonetheless, this is what survival horrors are, usually minus the linear part which is not an important distinction. If anything linear is better for this "problem". as it's a beeline backtrack back to your ammo rather than a maze of directions to go in and get "lost". Don't tell me you often get lost in old school FPS games too? The only FPS that truly made me lost was the first two Turok games, because they're a clusterfuck mindfuck, but are inclined regardless. I'd rather obscure not very well sign-posted level design as opposed to modern shitfests.

Well if there is no substantial punishment for misuse of ammo then ammo management becomes irrelevant.

Even survival horrors have basically screwed this up. Resident Evil 1 did it but RE4 is basically designed to never let you run out of ammo. System Shock 2 is widely known to be trivialized by the assault rifle.

 

[Rossy]

Because you ran out and didn't find it earlier, obviously.

Then you haven't explored the level good enough. Ammo starvation can be a fun mechanic in Doom-style shooters and many custom wads are quite good on that front. If you wasted ammo and have to kill a cyberdemon with only a pistol you did something wrong and the game rightfully punishes you for that. You either have to look for not yet found ammo in the level (perhaps in secrets) or you restart the level.

Regarding consoles: There have been too many good FPS games on the N64 to blame any decline on consoles themselves. While I don't think there are as good as PC Shooters at that time, they didn't show modern decline. There is only reason why a good FPS couldn't be released on a console: Modern developers can't design good FPS. It's the same on PC though.

 

[Average Manatee]

Because you ran out and didn't find it earlier, obviously.

Then you haven't explored the level good enough. Ammo starvation can be a fun mechanic in Doom-style shooters and many custom wads are quite good on that front. If you wasted ammo and have to kill a cyberdemon with only a pistol you did something wrong and the game rightfully punishes you for that. You either have to look for not yet found ammo in the level (perhaps in secrets) or you restart the level.

Let me show you every linear game ever:

It's not really a matter of exploring good, it's just a PITA to double back and search that you won't do unless you absolutely have to.

Yeah, some Doom wads are pretty good. But I was talking about commercial games.

 

[Black]

 

[Siveon]

At the very least Jedi Knight beat it by a year with its immersive worlds, mostly linear gameplay, cutscenes, etc. And I can't think of anyone who thinks Jedi Knight 2 was decline.

Jedi Knight 2 was decline. Smaller levels, slower gameplay, lightsaber 2 op plz nerf.

 

[Ash]

Regarding consoles: There have been too many good FPS games on the N64 to blame any decline on consoles themselves. While I don't think there are as good as PC Shooters at that time, they didn't show modern decline. There is only reason why a good FPS couldn't be released on a console: Modern developers can't design good FPS. It's the same on PC though.

Close, but that's not it.

It's often a case of making shit brainless games by design to appeal to the masses and cash in, aka commercialization. Seen it happen to every genre I ever loved. But lets say 30% of cases it was probably just a case of the developer being shit.

 

[sullynathan]

Ash you didn't get the appeal of gears of war then and halo to an extent. Gears is the ultimate dude bro shooter with super muscular characters killing as many bad guys as they can with pretty powerful weapons. The controls are responsive x the gameplay is erratic and multiplayer and Co op was a big part of its even though I never liked it's multilayer.

 

[Ash]

Of course it would have been you to tell me Gears was good.

Sorry, but rail shooters were better even when they were literally on rails, i.e arcade lightgun shooters.

"Gears is the ultimate dude bro shooter with super muscular characters killing as many bad guys as they can with pretty powerful weapons."

This can be used to describe shooters with actual good design that also have other merits too. Doom or Nukem 3D co-op? The dude-bro part is you and your bro making your own story via socialization. Even your story would have been better than Gears of War's cutscenes.

 

[sullynathan]

Of course it would have been you to tell me Gears was good.

Sorry, but rail shooters were better even when they were literally on rails, i.e arcade lightgun shooters.

"Gears is the ultimate dude bro shooter with super muscular characters killing as many bad guys as they can with pretty powerful weapons."

This can be used to describe shooters with good design that also have other merits too. Doom co-op? The dude-bro part is you and your bro making their own story via socialization. Even your story would have been better than Gears of War's cutscenes.

I don't think gears is a good series, but I did have fun in the co op of the 2nd game.

 

[Average Manatee]

At the very least Jedi Knight beat it by a year with its immersive worlds, mostly linear gameplay, cutscenes, etc. And I can't think of anyone who thinks Jedi Knight 2 was decline.

Jedi Knight 2 was decline. Smaller levels, slower gameplay, lightsaber 2 op plz nerf.

Sorry, I meant Dark Forces 2. Jedi Knight 2 should have been released as a multiplayer-only lightsaber-only dueling game since that's what its (justifiably) praised for and everything else was worse than JK1. JK1 SP is to JK2 SP like the original trilogy is to the prequels.

 

[J1M]

If it's objective then you can prove it. Now prove it. I already proved my case to a higher standard than you have.

It's rather simple: One only allows you to go in 8 directions independently, and the other allows you to go in 90, or whatever the angular resolution of the common stick is. Variable velocity is much less important, but still has its uses, especially for stealth games and platformers, or platforming segments within a FPS.

Well then come up with examples of people using one stick + mouse. If it's so great there has to be controllers implementing something like that.

It's likely not done as PC games still have to be designed for stock mouse and Keyboards. there is a custom hardware with a thumb-stick, but it's 8-way (same as WASD), likely for the aforementioned reason.

You are assuming that moving in 360 directions is superior to moving in 8 directions. It's not. That's about as stupid as assuming that real-time games are better than turn-based games "because you get 60 turns a second".

Changing direction quickly is the most important thing. Traversing an environment quickly (as in forward is 100% forward, not 95% forward or 100% forward and 5% to the left) is also important.

Variable velocity can also be handled on the keyboard in the form of modifier keys (shift) or state changes (crouching).

 

[HoboForEternity]

^

Everyone forgets Delta Force, I thought it was p. good.

Daaamn. Delta force black hawk down was one of my childhood best joy

 

[HansDampf]

I never once felt the need to move in more than 8 directions with WASD. Just point the mouse where you want to go... Only thing that can get annoying is speedcontrol. Modifier keys are just a crutch, and in many cases walking speed is either too slow or too fast.
Maybe analog keys would help.

 

[sullynathan]

metroid prime is a pretty good console fps.

 

[Carrion]

360-degree movement is important in some games, as is having analog control over your movement speed. In shooters, I'm not so sure.

In any case there have been attempts to create an FPS control scheme that gets around the limitations of WASD and/or gamepads (the first two are for consoles, the rest are for the PC):

Spoiler

I wonder if anyone has actually tried out those controllers that use both a mouse and an analog stick.

 

[Norfleet]

If you wasted ammo and have to kill a cyberdemon with only a pistol you did something wrong and the game rightfully punishes you for that. You either have to look for not yet found ammo in the level (perhaps in secrets) or you restart the level.

Nah, you'll be fine. Protip: To kill the Cyberdemon, shoot it until it dies.

 

[HansDampf]

metroid prime is a pretty good console fps.

In part thanks to its unique control scheme and lock-on mechanism. It's not a typical console fps.

 

[---]

And the FPS part isn't even its primary appeal. First of all it's an adventure game, like every other Metroid (and that's why I love it).