deuxhero
Arcane
There's several main problems with looting firearms in RPG/RPG esque games.
1: Economy
Either A: There's a durability stats that exists purely for busywork and to turn what was, for the enemy, a perfectly functional firearm into worthless trash the second you pick it up b: You can, and must, pick up and loot all the dropped guns to sell for money because less shit guns cost massively more because you can pick up and sell all guns. c: You arbitrarily can't pick up enemy weapons, or can't sell them.
2: Quality scaling might as well be HP bloat
Weapon quality keeps progressing and HP must scale to match, leading to low tier weapons being essentially spitballs against anything higher "level".
3: There's no reason to keep using older guns.
New Vegas had a good idea to make weapon tiers flow more naturally by giving reasons to use lower tier weapons in place of high ones: Single Shotgun has a higher damage than double shotgun (which makes sense since it has a longer barrel), Varmint rifle can be scoped/silenced where the service rifle can not, 9mm pistol has higher capacity and rate of fire than the revolvers after it, Marksman Carbine used common ammo, Recharger rifle/pistol has no ammo concern and more. It also obfuscated their presence by intentionally leaving some tier spots blank. New Vegas still had its flaws though, like higher tier weapons being better for no clear reason and even the lowest tier weapons being valuable enough for their weight to sell to willing vendors if the condition isn't too terrible (especially so with jury rigging).
Idea 1: Start with very lame weapons nobody is really interested in buying. Gun quality improves not by doing more damage, but by shedding really obnoxious deficiencies.
Tier 1:
Slamfire Shotgun: High damage, low range, low refire rate, delay in firing.
Luty: Very fast firing at typical damage, but also prone to jamming and has no accuracy since it isn't rifled. Uses real ammo that actually costs something.
Traumatic Pistol: Relatively high number of rounds (~14) and fast firing, but weak, low accuracy and low range
Cap and Ball revolver: Five/Six shots of acceptable damage at somewhat acceptable speeds, but practically impossible to reload under fire.
Single shot 22lr rifle: Accurate and high range (compared to the others listed), but low damage and slow to reload. While the only factory firearm, it's still a rimfire and thus ammo randomly fails.
Tier 2:
Single shot shotgun: Strictly better version of the slamfire shotgun.
Surplus bolt action: Acceptable but not great accuracy, high damage, good range, and uses ammo that's readily obtainable. Slow to refire and reload on top of being heavy. Can also be made prone to rimlock (functionally a jam) on refire if it uses a rimmed cartridge (Which the only one to be common and use an extant cartridge, the Mosin Nagant, does)
Traumatic Pistol (New barrel+Lead ammo): Trades reliability (this is craft made ammo of a type that the "gun" was never meant to work with) for much greater damage.
Tier 3:
Real Guns!
Problem is this requires some degree of setting cooperation. This wouldn't work in a place where real guns are accessible (legally or not) like an African war zone, a(n) agency/black money slush fund backed spy, or the US, but would fit European criminals (STALKER). It also makes the early game punishing for casuals (but that may be a good thing), and loses impact after the early games except for allowing quantity enemies without showering the player in loot.
Idea 2: Ammo quality matters.
With modern firearms the biggest impact on accuracy is the ammo used: Even budget guns can be sub MoA with decent ammo. This is likewise true for reliability (ammo related malfunctions far exceed other ones) and damage (quality hollowpoints do far more damage than FMJ). I know of only one game, 7.62 High Calibre with Hard Life mod, that did actually made ammo of differing quality obtainable, but it really only had low quality ammo in the very early game and only for a limited number of calibers (some poorly stored 7.62x51, 7.62x39 from everyone that makes it, and some steel case 5.56 to my memory). This adds some resource management where your quality ammo is an important commodity.
Are there any other ways to fix/improve the problems that you can think of?
1: Economy
Either A: There's a durability stats that exists purely for busywork and to turn what was, for the enemy, a perfectly functional firearm into worthless trash the second you pick it up b: You can, and must, pick up and loot all the dropped guns to sell for money because less shit guns cost massively more because you can pick up and sell all guns. c: You arbitrarily can't pick up enemy weapons, or can't sell them.
2: Quality scaling might as well be HP bloat
Weapon quality keeps progressing and HP must scale to match, leading to low tier weapons being essentially spitballs against anything higher "level".
3: There's no reason to keep using older guns.
New Vegas had a good idea to make weapon tiers flow more naturally by giving reasons to use lower tier weapons in place of high ones: Single Shotgun has a higher damage than double shotgun (which makes sense since it has a longer barrel), Varmint rifle can be scoped/silenced where the service rifle can not, 9mm pistol has higher capacity and rate of fire than the revolvers after it, Marksman Carbine used common ammo, Recharger rifle/pistol has no ammo concern and more. It also obfuscated their presence by intentionally leaving some tier spots blank. New Vegas still had its flaws though, like higher tier weapons being better for no clear reason and even the lowest tier weapons being valuable enough for their weight to sell to willing vendors if the condition isn't too terrible (especially so with jury rigging).
Idea 1: Start with very lame weapons nobody is really interested in buying. Gun quality improves not by doing more damage, but by shedding really obnoxious deficiencies.
Tier 1:
Slamfire Shotgun: High damage, low range, low refire rate, delay in firing.
Luty: Very fast firing at typical damage, but also prone to jamming and has no accuracy since it isn't rifled. Uses real ammo that actually costs something.
Traumatic Pistol: Relatively high number of rounds (~14) and fast firing, but weak, low accuracy and low range
Cap and Ball revolver: Five/Six shots of acceptable damage at somewhat acceptable speeds, but practically impossible to reload under fire.
Single shot 22lr rifle: Accurate and high range (compared to the others listed), but low damage and slow to reload. While the only factory firearm, it's still a rimfire and thus ammo randomly fails.
Tier 2:
Single shot shotgun: Strictly better version of the slamfire shotgun.
Surplus bolt action: Acceptable but not great accuracy, high damage, good range, and uses ammo that's readily obtainable. Slow to refire and reload on top of being heavy. Can also be made prone to rimlock (functionally a jam) on refire if it uses a rimmed cartridge (Which the only one to be common and use an extant cartridge, the Mosin Nagant, does)
Traumatic Pistol (New barrel+Lead ammo): Trades reliability (this is craft made ammo of a type that the "gun" was never meant to work with) for much greater damage.
Tier 3:
Real Guns!
Problem is this requires some degree of setting cooperation. This wouldn't work in a place where real guns are accessible (legally or not) like an African war zone, a(n) agency/black money slush fund backed spy, or the US, but would fit European criminals (STALKER). It also makes the early game punishing for casuals (but that may be a good thing), and loses impact after the early games except for allowing quantity enemies without showering the player in loot.
Idea 2: Ammo quality matters.
With modern firearms the biggest impact on accuracy is the ammo used: Even budget guns can be sub MoA with decent ammo. This is likewise true for reliability (ammo related malfunctions far exceed other ones) and damage (quality hollowpoints do far more damage than FMJ). I know of only one game, 7.62 High Calibre with Hard Life mod, that did actually made ammo of differing quality obtainable, but it really only had low quality ammo in the very early game and only for a limited number of calibers (some poorly stored 7.62x51, 7.62x39 from everyone that makes it, and some steel case 5.56 to my memory). This adds some resource management where your quality ammo is an important commodity.
Are there any other ways to fix/improve the problems that you can think of?