Why no FP shooters without the shooting?

[NJspeed]

What I'm talking about is how every first person shooter is basically too much non stop shooting. That's what makes Half Life 2 nice, there's plenty of shooting, but plenty of things in between firefights. Most other FPS your constantly battling from beginning to end.

Anyway, why can't we have a game with LESS shooting? Like way less. I'm talking way more puzzles and environments that are awesome to look at and explore. That's what was great about Morrowind, and Oblivion is going to be awesome too. Mafia was a great game.

Anyway, what's everyone elses opinion? The bottom line for me is I'm just bored of pointing and clicking. Guns after a while are all the same and the enemies are the same too. Is first person only for killing massive numbers of enemies? Let's see some sweet environments.

 

[Kamikazie]

First Person Shooters. i think thats why, but i understand where you're coming from

 

[joule]

Cause then they'd be boring.

 

[Viperidae]

Too much of a good thing can be bad. Everything needs balance.

 

[Mr-Fusion]

Also bored of pointing and clicking. Loved the physics puzzles in half-life2 wish there were more of them. Too many fps developers put no thought behind the pacing of their games. They think throwing the player in a level with x amount of enemies and guns is still a brilliant formula, i'm personally sick of it. It's boring and one dimensional.

 

[Warbie]

Some more variety would definately be nice.

When combat is nonstop it loses much of its impact, and can get quite dull and repetitive. Less fights and more puzzles/exploration please

 

[AfternoonLemon]

Yeah, the puzzles in HL2 were really good. I hate when you are presented with some Tomb Raider style jumps to do, such as in Half Life 1.

Also, MOH:AA had a lot of variations to keep it interesting.

 

[clarky003]

Id like to see if they could develop a game that doesnt envolve shooting atall, I dont know.. like a really scary ghost hunting game, something that you can get really emotionally attached to.

I had a brainstorm about this ages ago, something like a team of people sent to investigate poltergeist phenomenon, in a realistic setting.. you could be armed with camera's and EMF meters instead of guns, and the main element would be a really realistic NPC interaction process, and your objectives would be too talk to the people who lived there and confirm the phenomenon they report and try to catch it on sound or camera.. Theres something scarier about games when you dont have a gun.

 

[JNightshade]

That's... actually a really f*cking awesome idea. If it were executed well, I'd get it in a second.

And in response to the thread in general: I agree. When the combat is in concentrated bursts rather than a constant thing, it's much better. I envision a game where there's more exploration and interaction than combat, but the combat is jarring- physically intense, very shocking, very difficult. You come out of every encounter with the enemy absolutely scarred and terrified. That would be the shit.

 

[AiM]

IIRC there's a first person game titled (Call of?) Cthulu, it's some funky name like that and I saw a video of it where you were constantly thinking on your feet to escape and block the paths behind you while some angry folks were trying to kill you. It looked like a really intriguing game and the video I saw was on the xbox 1, however I think there's a PC port coming soon as well. I think the game's also based on some literature as well, so it might have a halfway decent plot.

 

[Javert]

Ever played the first two levels of Half-Life? ^^

 

[Snowden]

I envision a game where there's more exploration and interaction than combat, but the combat is jarring- physically intense, very shocking, very difficult. You come out of every encounter with the enemy absolutely scarred and terrified. That would be the shit.

That would rock.

 

[dream431ca]

Ever played Echonight? FP without the S.

 

[Sparta]

I was through Operation Flashpoint recently and my favourite parts of that game were levels were it took you about 10-15 minutes just to position yourself before attacking the enemy. Because if you got in the wrong position and opened fire, it would be over in a few seconds.

I'd like to see an FPS game where it took something more than bullets to kill an enemy.

 

[brink's]

Go play MYST you hippies!!1

 

[Asknoone]

Variety is where it’s at. That’s what makes Half-life 2 so great for me - the variety. Each level is designed with a specific locale in mind, and from that the gameplay evolves.

Whether it is tearing through the canals on your airboat, winding your way through a zombie infested town (where very sensibly, you see nothing but zombies) to racing through the ocean wastelands on a dune buggy. The latter of which you see the antlions in their true environment, and only there. A later twist on the gameplay has you controlling them.

Developers need to add variety to their gameplay and locations, and that way it keeps the game fresh at every turn.

 

[Jintor]

Whatwasthatthingcalled? Fatal Frame? I guess technically you were shooting, but you were shooting with cameras. ^ ^

 

[DEATH eVADER]

Anyway, why can't we have a game with LESS shooting? Like way less. I'm talking way more puzzles and environments that are awesome to look at and explore. That's what was great about Morrowind, and Oblivion is going to be awesome too. Mafia was a great game.

I reckon Vampire: Bloodlines would of been a great game, IF:

a) Troika had enough money to carry on
b) They bought the Source license AFTER HL2 had been released (more technical support from Valve)
c) The playable character wasn't restricted to doing missions, as opposed to Oblivions open-ended freedom
d) The used Morrowinds way of gaining experience, as opposed to experience points
e) They spent more time on the game (getting rid of that odd rotating boob bug)

I'm seriously hoping that someone can make a mod, based on this disaster of a game

 

[$kelet0r]

i'm suprised no one has mentioned thief and its hellspawn
brilliantly immersive if your more patient than most

 

[StardogChampion]

Id like to see if they could develop a game that doesnt envolve shooting atall, I dont know.. like a really scary ghost hunting game, something that you can get really emotionally attached to.

I had a brainstorm about this ages ago, something like a team of people sent to investigate poltergeist phenomenon, in a realistic setting.. you could be armed with camera's and EMF meters instead of guns, and the main element would be a really realistic NPC interaction process, and your objectives would be too talk to the people who lived there and confirm the phenomenon they report and try to catch it on sound or camera.. Theres something scarier about games when you dont have a gun.

That would be pretty cool. A huge 3D mansion to walk around in, with all the floorboards creaking and whatnot. It could be rpetty tense if done right.

 

[VictimOfScience]

You could also just mod your own game with whatever sort of gameplay you desire. In fact, that's much better than letting some devs and their team think up what might be good for everyone. This way, you know its perfect for you!

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

Very interesting.

 

[Direwolf]

Metroid Prime? Hello?
And Call of Cthulhu wasn't too bad, but it really was just a good concept that was rough around the edges. It was really ugly as a result of being in development for so long.

 

[dys4iK]

I imagine the biggest reason you see first person games as shooters is because that is what sells.

Aside from that, if you want a puzzle you can go find an abandoned warehouse, fall down a hole, and try to find your way out.

If you want to fight zombie hordes, it is a bit harder to pull off.

 

[Direwolf]

Well its more because the first person perspective is tricky to pull off when not doing combat. You have to have convincing interaction with the environment from a very odd perspective.

 

[Krabjuice]

So far, my favourite blend of FPSing came from Deus Ex. The shooting wasn't overdone, which is good because the game slid on ice. Had Deus Ex been more action oriented (A-la Farcry or Red Faction), then the slippery controls and akward weapons would have made the experience horiffic.

 

[Warbie]

So far, my favourite blend of FPSing came from Deus Ex. The shooting wasn't overdone, which is good because the game slid on ice. Had Deus Ex been more action oriented (A-la Farcry or Red Faction), then the slippery controls and akward weapons would have made the experience horiffic.

Agreed - the gunplay in Deus Ex was pretty damn poor. The rest was great, though, so this didn't matter.

Imagine Deues Ex with decent combat

 

[Noobulon]

Why no FP withouth the shooting?

Well, the first-person perspective brings inherent problems regarding depth perception. We all know it's difficult to pull off good melee combat in FP. It's also hard to interact precisely with close-range environmental features.... ever tried maneuvering small objects on a table in an fps? It's pretty clumsy and accident-prone, even in HL2.

For designers, the obvious way to avoid the depth-perception problem is to give the player projectile weapons and tools.
With this type of interaction, depth is essentially a non-issue. Hence, almost every FP game features guns as the primary tool of interaction. Lots of guns.

That's my theory anyway.
That's also why I'm interested to see how Nintendo's depth-sensitive input device will affect the first-person genre....

 

[JNightshade]

I think what people are saying is not less shooting, but rather less combat in general. I LOVE exploration in games. It's why Shadow of the Colossus is so perfect. Imagine an FPS with that kind of thing... *dies*

 

[NJspeed]

Another great idea would just be to have a FPS where you could go in DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS. Especially since everyone agrees they love exploring a cool environment. Well aside from Far Cry, why is there always one path? This linearity somehow got written into the FPS rulebook.

It's amazing the game makers still think we want just a bigger, stronger enemy to mow down with our X-BMFG 900,000 in "Doom/HL1 Replica 139".

No for real, I'm all about FPS and I love Quake 4 which is exactly the typical game I'm describing.. I just wish there was more variety for times when I want a cool experience without the constant blaring of gunfire. I mean there's plenty of great adventure movies that aren't constant gunfights.

 

[venturon]

Metroid Prime? Hello?

I too thought of mentioning Metroid Prime, because the thing I enjoyed most about that game was just exploring the environments and scanning things for information. Of course, that's not to say that I didn't enjoy the combat (I loved blasting the cloaked space pirates into walls). I think the most profound thing about Metroid Prime is that despite the fact you're confined to a pretty much linear path, there's so much stuff do look at and do no matter where you are that you don't really notice. You're only really given limited chunks of the world to explore at any one time, but the world's so rich in detail that it doesn't even matter.

 

[Jintor]

Agreed - the gunplay in Deus Ex was pretty damn poor. The rest was great, though, so this didn't matter.

Imagine Deues Ex with decent combat

Actually, I think that for its time it had OK combat. Ok, so it wasn't up to the standard of Halflife. Ok, so if you killed someone on steps their bodies would stick out weirdly. But at least it took into consideration silenced kills, bodies, headshots, locational damage. Everything looked like shat though.

I'd love to see a Source engine remake, if for nothing besides the graphical technical awesomeness that would result. Man, image people in conversations actually having their lines linked to their lips... amazing stuff.

 

[JNightshade]

I LOVED Metroid Prime for just the reasons Venturon described. Unfortunately, (as awesome as it is) I actually don't like the second one quite as much. Still, they're both gaming nirvana.

 

[boglito]

What I'm talking about is how every first person shooter is basically too much non stop shooting. That's what makes Half Life 2 nice, there's plenty of shooting, but plenty of things in between firefights. Most other FPS your constantly battling from beginning to end.

Anyway, why can't we have a game with LESS shooting? Like way less. I'm talking way more puzzles and environments that are awesome to look at and explore. That's what was great about Morrowind, and Oblivion is going to be awesome too. Mafia was a great game.

Anyway, what's everyone elses opinion? The bottom line for me is I'm just bored of pointing and clicking. Guns after a while are all the same and the enemies are the same too. Is first person only for killing massive numbers of enemies? Let's see some sweet environments.

Despite what people might say contrary to my advice, this is what you want:

1. Deus Ex.
2. Deus Ex: Invisible Wars (Do not let people tell you this game sucks, they have no clue. Get it for cheaps from the bargain bin and make up your own mind. Odds are, you'll be glad you did!)
3. Vampires The Masquerade: Bloodlines (It is true that this game has bugs, and is not a good implementation of the source-engine, but it _still_ is a very good game. Get it for cheaps from the bargain bin and apply all official and unofficial patches, and you should be good to go.)

All these games could have been so much better, but they still are top of the line if what you want is fp with not too much s. (VTM:B is partly 3rd person, but you can switch, except in meele combat, which is always 3rd person (to my knowledge).

Btw, if you try dx:iw make sure to download the high-res texture-pack. It is really well made and makes the game look much better.

.bog. loves all these games

 

[Sulkdodds]

There is a lot of scope for completely new spins on FPSs and games in general - whether it be simply making combat shorter, sharper and rarer, making it less of the main focus or even eradicating it altogether. We've already seen something like it in OpFlash as Sparta pointed out - a game where you might spend half a mission driving a jeep across five miles of countryside, sitting in a town with a squad of soldiers or waiting for your ride to arrive. I'd say at least 50% of that game was very boring military stuff - it really perfectly communicated the realistic mundanities of war. And it still didn't actually get boring and when it did it got boring in a really interesting way (if you see what I mean).

In the future, I think we can expect a lot of similiar ideas to ones in this thread to come out.

 

[Shamrock]

Id like to see if they could develop a game that doesnt envolve shooting atall, I dont know.. like a really scary ghost hunting game, something that you can get really emotionally attached to.

I had a brainstorm about this ages ago, something like a team of people sent to investigate poltergeist phenomenon, in a realistic setting.. you could be armed with camera's and EMF meters instead of guns, and the main element would be a really realistic NPC interaction process, and your objectives would be too talk to the people who lived there and confirm the phenomenon they report and try to catch it on sound or camera.. Theres something scarier about games when you dont have a gun.

Sounds like a Pokemon Snap kind of game.

I like it.

 

[Mechagodzilla]

Sounds like Fatal Frame.

 

[Eejit]

System Shock [2] all the way

 

[Fliko]

Also bored of pointing and clicking. Loved the physics puzzles in half-life2 wish there were more of them. Too many fps developers put no thought behind the pacing of their games. They think throwing the player in a level with x amount of enemies and guns is still a brilliant formula, i'm personally sick of it. It's boring and one dimensional.

Doom is a great example of this.

 

[JNightshade]

Man, I need to get in the industyi. I've posted two ideas for games so far, and the general reactions have been quite good indeed. Which means I am brilliant.

I WANNA MAKE GAMES!!!