Why are modern shooters so linear?

[Mr. T]

40oz said:

Would you like another example? Go ahead, pick a game.

Crysis 2

[The Lag]

i think it's hilarious when i spectate someone on QuakeLive and they never look up or down...it's extremely vital.

[Aliotroph?]

Belial said:

Starting with Terminator: Future Shock and Q1, I find it hard to name an FPS where I didn't need to look straight up or straight down.

Future Shock is an excellent example. The H-Ks flying over your head will own you pretty fast if you don't look up. That was the first game I played that had proper mouselook and used it well. Mastering mouselook is easy. Designing levels that use it well in battle without overwhelming the player is harder.

Happily, non-linear games appear every so often. DNF is a flop for that reason, but Doom Dude got me playing Red Faction: Guerrilla, and it's pretty fun.

[Nomad]

Captain Toenail said:

I don't really have a problem with linear levels unless it's blatantly obvious that there is only one way to go, e.g. conveniently placed crates, rubble, furniture etc. that channels you in one direction. Would it not hurt to add some side rooms to explore, even just another doorway into the next room? It just seems lazy.

This is the kind of lazy mapping I'm thinking of when I say "linear". Even Half-Life 1, which was a pretty straight-through tube run itself, had plenty of little nooks and crannies of Black Mesa that you could explore. Even areas that were completely unnecessary and had little to offer other than being there for you to look at if you wanted to, but you could easily play through the game a couple times without even seeing.

Pretty much what killed Duke Nukem Forever for me. The first two areas (I haven't even bothered to go further yet, to be honest) are chock full of side doors in which the locks that are apparently impervious to Duke's fists that can kill an armored alien in two hits or less. It's a matter of immersion to me, and that takes me right out of the game.

What I hate most about modern level design, though, is invisible barriers; these frequently contribute to linearity in levels too. Not only are you limited to places you can explore, you can't even explore places that upon visual inspection should be able to explore--with no discernible reason why you shouldn't. A good example in DNF is in the TV studio when you first walk through the curtain to the set, you immediately cannot go back the way you came when the only thing apparently blocking you is one guy with plenty of berth on either side of him. What is the reason for this? I mean, there's not that much to look at anyway, but what if I wanted to? Now the developer is absolutely forcing my path, which should piss anyone off.

[Use]

The Lag said:

i think it's hilarious when i spectate someone on QuakeLive and they never look up or down...it's extremely vital.

Well I bet I could find 4 minutes of video that could prove otherwise, mister. 4 minutes of video is all I need to know everything about a game that takes years of playing to master, if ever.

[dew]

Use3D said:

4 minutes of video is all I need to know everything about a whole genre that takes years of playing to master, if ever.

ftfy

[40oz]

"Modern" games developed 15 years ago, great picks!

Belial said:

Terminator: Future Shock

Congratulations Belial, In 6 and a half minutes of gameplay I counted two enemies that were not standing in perfectly level terrain with the player. I guesss you Win, huh?

I'll give you some extra points for Quake given that the grenade launcher is the game's signature weapon, you definitely would need to use aiming in order to get the grenade arches right.

Mr. T said:

Crysis 2

Oops! Any enemies between my feet? no. Any above my head? no. All my enemies appear to be standing on perfectly level terrain with me.

[Mr. T]

Is this good enough for you princess?

[dew]

i won't let you dismiss quake with that retarded quip about the grenade launcher. some quake live 1on1 action:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxRy09GgjCA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqVHf8DZN3k
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyMLRLm3YB4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IF6BcpcHDsw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lssQUNgUdU

care to comment?

and guess what! dark forces. the game occassionally forces you to shoot enemies on different floors without the gift of freelook. you need to tap keys to look up/down and hope for autoaim to kick in. it is disruptive, uncomfortable and damages immersion. that kinda contradicts all the crap you've been spewing here, dark forces with mouse freelook would play so much better.

[Use]

Hey someone post some pacifist runs of Doom2, by this logic we can deduce Doom doesn't need a fire button becuase it wasn't used during some 2 minute video.

40oz said:

"Modern" games developed 15 years ago, great picks!

Yeah crazy isn't it? Mouselook has been around longer than you've had pubes, yet suddenly you're going to disprove it's usefulness to people who've actually spent dozens of hours if not more playing these games with a couple stupid youtube videos? You're either the dumbest person alive or the worst troll ever.

[killer2]

Can you guys cut the drama and return to the subject?!Jesus!While I am at it,I might say that some more explorable areas in games definantely wouldn't hurt...but hey,why waste time on those areas,the devs think.

[40oz]

Use3D said:

Doom doesn't need a fire button

I'm on MAP07. wat do?

[j4rio]

40oz said:

I'm on MAP07. wat do?

run around while mancubuses take out spiders via mancubus-fireballs-pass-through-walls glitch

how did you get past map 2 anyway?

[Marnetmar]

j4rio said:

how did you get past map 2 anyway?

[printz]

WildWeasel said:

Aiming up and down is still an important game mechanic due to the presence of hit boxes. Aiming higher on an enemy grants the possibility of additional damage to the target, assuming one's aim is true, while aiming lower (say, at the torso) grants a larger target but less possibility of damage. These are the sorts of things Doom doesn't do - aiming along both axes is far more important in modern FPS games than it is in Doom and its ilk.

I can't believe you people are forgetting the obvious: flying monsters, ceiling hanging monsters. They appear in Doom 3 (lost souls), Half Life (barnacles) and are very nasty. You need to learn to look up as well and practically you get a new degree of freedom to worry about when you get ambushed. It's a gameplay mechanic that does NOT happen in classic Doom, not because of z-blocking (it was "fixed" in ports) but because the Doom monsters lack the A_Chase AI to do it. It's among many other things that make me pissed off that classic Doom happens to be the most popular FPS for mod makers, and not something more 3d.

[DuckReconMajor]

40oz has a point. Lots of games don't have you looking up or down all that much, which if you notice in many games has the vertical sensitivity much lower than the horizontal one, especially on consoles. I do remember Game Informer praising CoD4's multiplayer having more vertical combat than many other games.

That said, I still think 40oz post about mice and mouselook are unnecessary and we all need to go back to NES controllers is silly, which is why I said what I did.

[printz]

DuckReconMajor said:

40oz has a point. Lots of games don't have you looking up or down all that much, which if you notice in many games has the vertical sensitivity much lower than the horizontal one, especially on consoles. I do remember Game Informer praising CoD4's multiplayer having more vertical combat than many other games.

I remember that almost every 3d shooter with freelook had its share of jumping or flying monsters that went above your head, requiring you to aim well above the horizontal field of vision. Maybe I didn't play the crappy modern ones.

[Grazza]

40oz: You've been turning a few too many threads into shit recently with your overly aggressive/argumentative and repetitive posting. Consider this a warning.

[Scripten]

DuckReconMajor said:

40oz has a point. Lots of games don't have you looking up or down all that much, which if you notice in many games has the vertical sensitivity much lower than the horizontal one, especially on consoles. I do remember Game Informer praising CoD4's multiplayer having more vertical combat than many other games.

That said, I still think 40oz post about mice and mouselook are unnecessary and we all need to go back to NES controllers is silly, which is why I said what I did.

He has a point, but I think it's the wrong one. From a level-design perspective, more range in enemy location on the y-axis would be nice. Multiplayer games, Unreal and Quake Live notably, employ this in varying degrees, and it makes the gameplay quite a bit more dynamic. If you've got an x, y, and z axis, then why not use all of them?

Also, ninja'd with flying monsters, which are great and don't show up enough for my tastes.

[DeathevokatioN]

40oz said:

I'm on MAP07. wat do?

Also on E1M8 you have to shoot the barons, on E2M8 you have to kill the cyberdemon, on E3M8 you have to kill the spider mastermind, and Map30 you have to kill the icon of sin.

But then again I just realized Use3d was being sarcastic. :P

[Csonicgo]

DeathevokatioN said:

Also on E1M8 you have to shoot the barons

oooh I dunno, I'm sure you could get the spectre horde to kill them somehow. maybe. Can someone verify if that's been done?

[dew]

Csonicgo said:

oooh I dunno, I'm sure you could get the spectre horde to kill them somehow. maybe. Can someone verify if that's been done?

pacifist runs for e1m8 and e3m8 are done already. e2m8 and map30 are considered impossible without extremely improbable game manipulation. map07 pacifist is possible, although not without the fire button.

anyways, i'm done. 40oz keeps ignoring my posts so he doesn't have to admit he's an ignorant troll full of shit.

[Memfis]

dew said:

map07 pacifist is possible, although not without the fire button.

:)

[hex11]

Well the thing about Quake is the rocket jumping. In SP you can do pretty well with keyboard-only controls or simple NES-style gamepad (that's how I played it on my NDS), except for some strange maps like Ziggurat Vertigo. But if you try playing like that on DM server, you won't do very well. You have to be able to look quickly in all directions, in order to pick out snipers lurking in the rafters, and then also look down to rocket jump up there yourself and pour it on those foolish enough to walk by your position. :P

But the RJ takes a lot of coordination and practice to do it right every time. So maybe that kind of gameplay is not appropriate for games that target a more casual audience. I guess it would be good to have both types of games, and make it clear what the design was meant to accomplish.

[Belial]

40oz said:

"Modern" games developed 15 years ago, great picks!

I guess you missed the words 'starting with'.

printz said:

I can't believe you people are forgetting the obvious: flying monsters, ceiling hanging monsters.

Well I didn't want to embarass him too much by mentioning flyers, rocket jumping and swimming.

[Gez]

Scrags don't do a lot of damage, sure, but if you prefer to look up when going through a door rather than let monsters take potshots at you, you can thwart many an ambush in Quake.

[hex11]

Swimming's not really a problem with the swim up/down keys (which don't change your facing, only your vertical position). The scrags can hurt a little, but a lot of times they'll come down to your level, so you just have to find some cover and wait for them.

The biggest problem in SP is being able to take out monsters on a ledge, like for example the ogres in E2M4 (Ebon Fortress). You're swimming in the deep water outside the fortress, so can't use the jump key then fire a grenade at the apex. With a rocket launcher, it's a piece of cake (stand back far enough and the autoaim will take care of them), but no suck luck with the grenade launcher, not without at least using the keyboard look up/down keys.

[gggmork]

This thread is specifically about shooters, but I'm saying games in general could have more interesting & varied gameplay when the data and your input isn't swamped by all the possible states of which direction you're facing.

(googled about how many degrees in a sphere if that makes mathematical sense):
'You have 360° in a circle. If each of those points represents the intersection of a circle with the plane, then you will have 360 circles perpendicular to the plane, each with 360°. 360 x 360 = 129,600.'

So 129,600 possible direction states in a freelook shooter, compared to 8 in some old school zelda games. 8 is simple and controllable... 129,600 is damn near analogue as far as a game is concerned. In shooters you typically have a sniping gun or something and navigate these 129,600 directions to pick off enemies.. because navigating the sphere like that is about the only gameplay element possible when 129,600 directions is the data. In NES punchout.. you have a 'fake' 3d perspective but its incredibly simplified, you don't look around anywhere so the controller input and gameplay can focus on something unique and that game is a lot deeper and more fun than any modern shooter I've played (though it needs custom made harder enemies).
I can almost erase all the above because zdoom with freelook is fun (though I have a skewed view cuz I don't use the mouse). And prboom+ type gameplay (2.5d, infinite vertical heights) hit a sweet spot of simplicity vs. complexity before almost all modern games became 'true' 3d. I guess the point is that when the environment is a 3d sphere, the range of possible unique games to make with that is basically limited to mario 64 clones and shooter clones, and even those are quite similar and just depend on whether the camera is inside your character or outside. Controlling a camera etc can be a lot of unnecessary cumbersome stuff when you want street fighter or punchout style skill/twitch gameplay (not to mention 3d complexity means slower moving/taking more processing time so doom3 fights many fewer enemies at a time, etc). I guess I'm done shitting text now.

[bgraybr]

gggmork said:

I guess the point is that when the environment is a 3d sphere, the range of possible unique games to make with that is basically limited to mario 64 clones and shooter clones...

Wait I kinda lost you there... freedom of movement = less variety in games? It's not possible to have different control schemes now?

[Craigs]

There's a considerable amount of vertical combat in bad company 2. You constantly need to watch ledges and outcrops for snipers, the skies for helicopters and UAVs, and there's one rush map in multiplayer with a light house somewhere around the middle that both sides constantly try to take that provides a huge vantage point for either side due to the fact that it overlooks both the village the objective's as well as the area from which the attackers approach.

Oh and there are plenty of maps in counterstrike where looking up and down are essential. I can't remember the names of all of them since it's been forever since I played but I still remember their layouts fairly well. Aztec for example, has several courtyards with ledges overlooking them that make for perfect ambush spots. You've also got cs_italy I think it was called that has quite a few multistory windows and walkways that make for great sniping positions