How could we give the FPS a shot in the arm?

[hub2]

...one or less hands. That's a laughably tall order though.

Like some kind of thought controller?

Yes that is quite a tall order.

[spanx]

Lets forget this whole notion of lightguns shall we. They don't work on big posh TV's.

[SeanR]

Lets forget this whole notion of lightguns shall we. They don't work on big posh TV's.

That Xbox one (sold out atm) supports 100hz tvs.

beamers are an altogether different prospect mind

[Hass]

The fps still has a lot of benefit to reap from multiplayer gaming. Console fps games that incorporate a solid multiplayer game haven't really come of age yet but with Counter-strike, Halo2 etc. all on the horizon, the future for on-line fps looks pretty bright.

I'd like to see more emphasis put on team-play in the multiplayer arenas, clans and what not becoming a normal part of gaming as opposed to people who really should get out more.

Once you've got decent on-line play, A.I. kind of becomes pretty insignificant after that.

[hub2]

Take the basic mechanic of Deus Ex, you know, not just rushing in and blowing everything up (but it's an option) as a base.

Then add:

The squad dynamics of Call of Duty and Halo in single player mode and that of RS4, Ghost Recon, TF in multiplayer.

The AI of Halo.

The weapon balance of Halo.

The vehicles and pitch battles and set peices of Halo, Battlefield 1942, Call of Duty etc.

The physics engine of HL2.

The gorgeous enviroments of Metroid Prime.

Just goes to show that FPS's while they haven't been advancing as rapidly recently still manange to innovate. It's putting ALL of these advances into one package that will be the next hurdle... not neccesarily another new mechanic.

[playing for years]

I want a new morrowind that has a good sword combat system. Thats all.

Cheers :::...

[lancashirebambaata]

all the things that FPS's have already tried are what we want, we just want them all together and put together well. Things such as

diffrent effects depending on where you get shot

ordering your team about

realism

freedom

KILLING!

[SeanR]

all the things that FPS's have already tried are what we want, we just want them all together and put together well. Things such as

diffrent effects depending on where you get shot

ordering your team about

realism

freedom

KILLING!

Operation Flashpoint?

[Sprite Machine]

...one or less hands. That's a laughably tall order though.

Like some kind of thought controller?

Or your feet?

A treadmill controller, perhaps? With a lightgun? And a VR helmet?

[scottcr]

I don't particularly bother about huge amounts of freedom or online play.. in an FPS, all I want is interesting environments to kill things in and good AI. Why can't I pick up a chair and chuck it at people, why can't I throw monitors around...? Why can't I shoot out all the lights? Etc Etc.

No more crates. I've never seen a crate that I can smash with 3 whips of a crowbar in my LIFE.

[Lazychu]

Metal Arms, with Co-op and less brown.

[Kryptonian]

Don't get me started on crates...

Heh - in my losing my job thread, I said about being a 3D artist specifically geared towards making crates as there are so many of the bloody things in games.

As for FPS's:

1. Living breathing worlds? Full of civillians. Like in The Matrix where Neo is trying to get to the exit without getting gunned down by the agents.

2. Having to assassinate someone and in the mission briefing you're given a photo of them and told what building they work in. It's up to you to find them.

3. Halo AI x10 (maybe too hard?)

4. Definitely more co-op shenanigans.

[Cheeko]

Like some kind of thought controller? 

Or your feet?

A treadmill controller, perhaps? With a lightgun? And a VR helmet?

What was that TV show years ago that Craig Charles presented where they had VR helmets and stood on two pads that when you jogged on the spot it controlled the speed of the movement in the game?

I'd like an fps with more variety in its style of play, you could have all out blaster sections like a modern day Gauntlet, Other bits where you simply don't have enough ammo and have to do enough to survive in a Starship troopers esque defending a base against an onslaught, loads of bots fighting for you but getting called to specific areas to add vital extra support and finally falling back into an arriving craft whilst covering for a few stragglers, maybe with an objective to save above a certain percentage of soldiers. An Ico esque section guiding a weaponless person around with an Aliens versus predator2 fear factor, occasionally hearing scuttling and picking up things on a motion sensor type stuff. Interspersed with some well constructed 3D platforming and intelligent puzzle rooms that move on from the draggable box near an innaccessible ledge formula. Requiring proper lateral thinking and environment interaction. An Enemy at the gates/Silent Scope styled sniper section, where you know an enemy sniper is within a large environment, you have to study an area and navigate to a good vantage point without getting spotted and you have to wait for ages for that one clear shot, testing your foes patience and perhaps waiting for them to slip up, using techniques to draw them out or trick them into firing the shot that gives away their location. Being sat for ages studying an area, looking for clues to an opponents whereabouts would be really tense and awesome IMO.

just a couple of ideas, whaddya reckon?

[kerraig UK]

Don't get me started on crates...

Heh - in my losing my job thread, I said about being a 3D artist specifically geared towards making crates as there are so many of the bloody things in games.

As for FPS's:

1. Living breathing worlds? Full of civillians. Like in The Matrix where Neo is trying to get to the exit without getting gunned down by the agents.

2. Having to assassinate someone and in the mission briefing you're given a photo of them and told what building they work in. It's up to you to find them.

3. Halo AI x10 (maybe too hard?)

4. Definitely more co-op shenanigans.

Hitman 2 did the whole 'choose your target' thing quite well. It just gave you a vague description.

thing is, it let you fuck up and restart, whereas it woulda been much better if it had gone "oh shit, you shot the wrong dude, get outta there' and then let the story branch off in a different direction.

Thats what I wantmost. branching stories. none of this shitty splinter cell type "you've set off too many alarms, game over". Instead howzabout "you've set off too many alarms, blast your way outta that fukka". then the next level being, "cos you messed up, they've attacked our military base, get over there and help our boys out" or summit.

In truth though, I think the FPS genre is pushed in more directions than any other gaming genre.

[Popo]

I want a FPS with realistic physics. And I mean realistic. How many times have you come across a locked wooded door and been forced to go looking for a key, when your carrying the latest military MX-956 MRK II personal anti-tank rocket launcher. I want to be able to blow the shit out of locked doors. Grenades do realistic structural damage, rockets put holes in ANY wall (you hearing me Red Faction team), I shoot out supports of a roof, the whole thing collapses, someone shoots a wooden table beside me, I want a splinter in my eye. Now thats realism. And I want it.

Best thing about this idea - no more tranditional FPS puzzles. Developers would have to think in a completely different way and I think a combination of these things would really give a fresh FPS experience.

[Graham S]

I'd like to be able to see my own feet. That is all.

Atkins diet.

[ChrisN]

Its a tall order, but I'd like a few games that interacted with one another, even only in a minor way. For example:

An RPG where, as a mini game, you could bet on the outcome of some F-Zero style races.. but.. the races are real ones played by real people in another game. So you'd be RPGing it up in Morrowwind 2097, betting on your mates game of Quantum Redshift 5.

Or...

You're racing across an expansive wilderness in Colin McCrae 7, and you go hurtling through the middle of a gun fight as people are playing Soldier of Fortune 3. If your car gets shot up, you take damage as if you'd hit a tree or something.

Novalogics Armoured Fist and Comanche games interacted in this sort of way. It was awesome.

[Silly Killer]

Its a tall order, but I'd like a few games that interacted with one another, even only in a minor way. For example:

An RPG where, as a mini game, you could bet on the outcome of some F-Zero style races.. but.. the races are real ones played by real people in another game. So you'd be RPGing it up in Morrowwind 2097, betting on your mates game of Quantum Redshift 5.

Or...

You're racing across an expansive wilderness in Colin McCrae 7, and you go hurtling through the middle of a gun fight as people are playing Soldier of Fortune 3. If your car gets shot up, you take damage as if you'd hit a tree or something.

Novalogics Armoured Fist and Comanche games interacted in this sort of way. It was awesome.

The ultimate extension of this has to be a virtual world in which each activity is a separate game in its own right, occupying a plausible location in that world, and interacting with other activities.

e.g. imagine a virtual city with

a race track for driving games

a criminal or terrorist group up to no good, and police fighting them, for action/FPS

a bar district, for dating sims

a martial arts tournament

etc. etc.

[SeanR]

Like some kind of thought controller? 

Or your feet?

A treadmill controller, perhaps? With a lightgun? And a VR helmet?

What was that TV show years ago that Craig Charles presented where they had VR helmets and stood on two pads that when you jogged on the spot it controlled the speed of the movement in the game?

<SNIP>

http://www.ukgameshows.com/atoz/programmes/c/cyberzone/

[hungry joe]

World War 2

[MK-1601]

A surprising number of the requests in this thread have been done (with varying degrees of success).

Quake 3, SvenCoop and Alice have had Micro Machines-y giant world levels.

Aside from SvenCoop, NOLF2 has a co-op mode but no-one's ever tried it as far as I know...

Tribes 2 (and Arx Fatalis, and Duke3D after a fashion) let you see your feet. (I still don't understand why it's not become standard... I suppose it would draw attention to the primitive nature of the character animation used when the player is on a narrow platform, stairs, or a ledge).

Doom 3 sounds like it's going to have more environment-based puzzles.

Minigames/subgames are a bit... meh.

We've had lots of boring environments and enemies in FPSes because that's all that could be done with the technology at the time. We're only now starting to get FPS games with decently large and convincing outdoor areas. And when every character on screen is (computationally and actually) expensive, you have to make them do a few things (directly linked to the gameplay) very well.

I think the big growth area at the moment is third person games anyway. Mafia did a ton of stuff that no-one seems to be able or willing to do with an FPS (huge environment with vehicles, detailed indoor locations, accurate gun combat and acrobatics that were like Max Payne, except without being a tedious slow motion duck shoot). Sword combat only really makes sense when you can see yourself onscreen too (one of the few things the Jedi Knight games got right).

[Alex W.]

You don't need a treadmill, you use a dance mat. Fools.

[AloeVera]

Why do you all want co-op in a game?

I'd rather go postal in Safeway.

[connerfitzgerald]

Although it might cut out a chunk of people, i'd like to see more persistant worlds that you'd fight co-op with over an extended peroid,

Like (bad example warning) you'd be part of a special ops team behind enemy lines in iraq, you'd have jeeps and what ever, groups of people would form squadrons, where team tactics would be empasized, death would be made realistic by using a once your gone your gone rule

After the after the missions everyone would leave the world,but it would remain saved, but then when people logged on again the world would continue from a previous state

it'd be cool because it would create a team atmosphere like 5 aside, where every week the same people would meet up to take on another mission.

I don't know it planetside is like this.

And if we are gonna get realistic might as well include complete mags where people need to try and use every last bullet in the magazine, instead of reloading after 3 shots.

[Kryptonian]

Why do you all want co-op in a game?

I'd rather go postal in Safeway.

With a friend

I think co-op Halo does it for most people.

[Ktw]

Someone suggested Mario Paintball once.

That would be ace!

Why would it be ace?

As for the FPS, as mentioned there are already quite a few games doing some of the things right. The shot in the arm would certainly be the game to do them all right.

Halo does the AI and the balance and the whole shield-health dynamic (which is brilliant and should never be forgotten - it adds tons to the gameplay). Half-Life 2 is set to bring the physics to a new dimension. Deus Ex (and Systemshock before it) blended RPG elements into the FPS. XIII, while flawed in many ways, lets you use everyday objects as weapons, allows you to take hostages etc. Quite a lot of good design elements in that one, actually. Hitman 2 has great "surveillance AI" - you can fool enemies.

That's only the singleplayer side of things, of course. Then there's the persistent world MMOFPS concept, which is brilliant. Adding all of the above into such a game, with branching storylines, would easily result in the Best Game Evar!!!1

The main issue that I have with DOOM III is that it feels just like DOOM II only with better graphics. As far as the FPS goes, I feel the genre has evolved quite a lot the last few years.

[Mr Do 71]

....thing is, it let you fuck up and restart, whereas it woulda been much better if it had gone "oh shit, you shot the wrong dude, get outta there' and then let the story branch off in a different direction.

Thats what I wantmost. branching stories. none of this shitty splinter cell type "you've set off too many alarms, game over". Instead howzabout "you've set off too many alarms, blast your way outta that fukka". then the next level being, "cos you messed up, they've attacked our military base, get over there and help our boys out" or summit.

In truth though, I think the FPS genre is pushed in more directions than any other gaming genre.

Cool. I like the sound of that. Plus that goes well with Redeye's idea of actually being able to lose/not save the end of the world etc...

edit: Namco's Breakdown FPP/S should be interesting.

[Graham S]

Falcon on the Amiga did the same sort of thing for the flightsim with its campaign mode. It worked really nicely, and gave a real incentive to replay and do better.

[Mr Pessimistic]

Or your feet?

A treadmill controller, perhaps? With a lightgun? And a VR helmet?

You do know what you're suggesting don't you?

Combining FPS gaming with exercise?

Imagine, Half-Life 2 released with a treadmill controller as standard, obesity among young American males solved within our life-time.

[Tom*]

Theres always games that claim to be exactly what I've wanted but never deliver, so it would be great to see games like:

- GTA x Resident Evil x 28 Days Later as an fps.

either with AI teams or online as a persistent mmorpg, humans get together in groups in cities and countryside to escape from and fight hordes of zombies which have infected the world. GTA element so you can run/drive/fly wherever you want helping to rescue other survivors from certain doom. Barricade yourselves in buildings desperately fending off zombie crowds until some other players chopper you out or you get to a firetruck or something.

- Mech game x Shenmue x GTA as an fps.

Junk Metal by Square Enix looks kind of like this but I reckon it'll just be about the combat, deathmatch and not much else.

A persistent mmorpg in which you live in a city/world at war in the near future fought with mechs. you can choose to be a mech pilot, you earn money however and buy/build your own mech to help in the battles. You can walk around everywhere with/without you mech and fight in other ways and can choose to do boring stuff too like normal jobs or mechanics. Some players can lead groups in a rts style by giving orders to mech units.

- World War II/III/whatever

I know WW2 Online is out. I've never played it but it can't be that good or else everyone would be playing it. A persistent WW2 world full scale with real physics, u can go wherever etc etc, maybe AI takes over fighting when players are not there. Like battefield 1942 but full scale and more 'organised' maybe.

I guess the technology just isn't there atm. some day.....