Friday, July 27, 2007

Realism, why it doesnt work in multiplayer FPS's


Ok, I play CS, Wolfenstien, Halo 2 etc..


But why the hell cant someone make a realistic multi player fps?


Well I'll tell you why...
Ok lets first define the realism I'm talking about. When I say realism, I'm referring to the use of actual tactics being successful and things such as "flash bang" and "smoke grenade" used for something else besides pissing everyone off. Now why don't these tactics work? Well lets see what would happen in a normal game of CS if you employed some of them.
1) covering fire and pinning
All right you go and look over a crate to see some terrorists coming at you (your CT) some comrades charge at them (all ready unrealistic) you "cover them" by shooting in the general direction of the Terrorists, only to find that they keep coming, because unlike real individual, they don't value living, and not being hurt, and do not retreat to not get shot, they simply bet on the probability that they only have a 1/5 chance of getting killed by your fire, and there feeling lucky, or should I say "leet"
2) flanking
All right, this all ready cancels it self out because of number 1, if you cant pin an enemy, then they wont stay put, and cant be flanked and fixed.
3) smokes and flash bangs
This is possible in cs, but only barley, and only on certain maps. For it to work you need the enemy to travel in groups and you need to as well, a.k.a teamwork. Flash bangs and smokes don't work once you have people charging vigilante style ahead of you, and the enemy is doing the same, because when you throw a flash in a situation like that 50% of the time it blinds half your team as well as half of theirs, effectively pissing of everyone and putting you on your way to getting banned.
Why doesn't it work?
The key thing here is that these games are missing the "human element" Sure players are playing against real people, but if you die its no big deal and so "defencive action" is almost never taken, people need to fear something for them to hit the dirt or hide behind things.
Is this true of all games?
Interestingly enough, if you play CS with Bots instead of player, game play is much more realistic. Bots seem to value there "life" more then human players, and so they duck and work as a team.
So what can be done?
To be perfectly honest, I don't know, the best option would be to make a greater punishment for dieing then simply missing the rest of the round. What this punishment would be, I don't know ( I don't think a shock collar would be to popular with gamers) But as of right now, tactics are worth nothing compared to reflexes, I guess all us strategy gamers will just half to wait.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

i fully agree very intelligent post, i hope a new system will be implemented in the future, for new games, but as for now, me & my friends use as realistic as possible tactics when communicating through skype in game

Anonymous said...

I fully agree. thats why me and my friends use communication though skype as well as current military tactic as realisticly as possible when playing together in game