Adding Realism To Shooting Games My ideas for shooters

[thejode 0]

Probably the best shooter I've played would be Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Now, in games, I'm all for realism. BC2 properly demonstates realism within the game. You only have to shoot people about 3 or 4 times for them to die, explosions look very good, dust flies around the tank when you fire, ect. Now, here are some improvements that they should add to make the game even better:

1.) Probably one of the most annoying things in the Battlefield series is the delay from the firing and the actual destruction. (eg. You shoot a fence, and it takes half a second for the damage to show up, or you crash a humvee, and a second later the hood crumples. Things like that). I believe it is due to the calculations the game has to preform, or maybe some kind of server lag. Either way, it makes the game experience a little less realistic. This also applies when you kill people with a tank. You blast them to smitherines, but they can still run around for a second before they die. They should just drop once the tank fires.

2.) Limb damage. I believe this is demonstrated in Fallout 3, where if you shoot an enemy in the leg, they crumple to the ground. In BC2, you can shoot somebody in the leg with a sniper rifle, and they just keep on running. That's pretty stupid. I say they crumple to the ground, and a teammate needs to go back and pull them into cover. Then the player who got shot in the leg should have to keep pressing a button or buttons repeatidly to stand back up. This is somewhat like WWE games, where it takes you a little bit of time to stand back up if you just smacked over the head with a metal chair.

3.) Explosions. When the tank fires, the explosion from the thing(the tank ammuntion) should be a little more explosive. It just whips up dust and makes a little explosion on the ground. The boom should be big. The C4 explosion could be bigger, also.

4.) Non-regenerating health. I don't see why suddenly all the shooter games abandoned the health meter and moved to regeneratable health. I find that totally annoying. Bring back the health bar!

5.) Explosions should be fatal. When a tank blasts in your general direction, the force from the explosion would fling you like a ragdoll. I think that DICE should make the explosions a little more deadly.

6.) Their so-called terrain effects, as shown in this video here make it hard to drive if you smash up the ground too much. Definately NOT true. It's so easy to go across the potholes in the ground if its beat up. They should make it extremely inconvinient to go across the potholes, possibly extending it so that the HUMVEEs can get stuck if they try to cross.

7.) There should be animation for your army character getting in/out of vehicles. People just hop out of tanks and humvees right when their vehicle's about to explode. They really need to change that, because it gets annoying..

8.) Real-time tank charging. I hate how when you get into a tank fight, some guy just stands behind the tank with a drill fixing the tank while you get blasted to smithereens. They should make it so that the engineer has to crawl under the tank and press a series of buttons for 30-40 seconds, not just use a stupid drill.

Those are my reasons. I'm probably going to ship this off to EA or dice so that they can improve the final game once it comes out. Right now, Bad Company 2 is only available as a BETA. As far as I know, they are not handing out beta keys. The full game is going to come out in March, so stay tuned!

Thejode

Edited December 15, 2009 by thejode (see edit history)

[armynavy123 0]

Probably the best shooter I've played would be Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Now, in games, I'm all for realism. BC2 properly demonstates realism within the game. You only have to shoot people about 3 or 4 times for them to die, explosions look very good, dust flies around the tank when you fire, ect. Now, here are some improvements that they should add to make the game even better:
1.) Probably one of the most annoying things in the Battlefield series is the delay from the firing and the actual destruction. (eg. You shoot a fence, and it takes half a second for the damage to show up, or you crash a humvee, and a second later the hood crumples. Things like that). I believe it is due to the calculations the game has to preform, or maybe some kind of server lag. Either way, it makes the game experience a little less realistic. This also applies when you kill people with a tank. You blast them to smitherines, but they can still run around for a second before they die. They should just drop once the tank fires.

2.) Limb damage. I believe this is demonstrated in Fallout 3, where if you shoot an enemy in the leg, they crumple to the ground. In BC2, you can shoot somebody in the leg with a sniper rifle, and they just keep on running. That's pretty stupid. I say they crumple to the ground, and a teammate needs to go back and pull them into cover. Then the player who got shot in the leg should have to keep pressing a button or buttons repeatidly to stand back up. This is somewhat like WWE games, where it takes you a little bit of time to stand back up if you just smacked over the head with a metal chair.

3.) Explosions. When the tank fires, the explosion from the thing(the tank ammuntion) should be a little more explosive. It just whips up dust and makes a little explosion on the ground. The boom should be big. The C4 explosion could be bigger, also.

4.) Non-regenerating health. I don't see why suddenly all the shooter games abandoned the health meter and moved to regeneratable health. I find that totally annoying. Bring back the health bar!

5.) Explosions should be fatal. When a tank blasts in your general direction, the force from the explosion would fling you like a ragdoll. I think that DICE should make the explosions a little more deadly.

6.) Their so-called terrain effects, as shown in this video here make it hard to drive if you smash up the ground too much. Definately NOT true. It's so easy to go across the potholes in the ground if its beat up. They should make it extremely inconvinient to go across the potholes, possibly extending it so that the HUMVEEs can get stuck if they try to cross.

7.) There should be animation for your army character getting in/out of vehicles. People just hop out of tanks and humvees right when their vehicle's about to explode. They really need to change that, because it gets annoying..

8.) Real-time tank charging. I hate how when you get into a tank fight, some guy just stands behind the tank with a drill fixing the tank while you get blasted to smithereens. They should make it so that the engineer has to crawl under the tank and press a series of buttons for 30-40 seconds, not just use a stupid drill.

Those are my reasons. I'm probably going to ship this off to EA or dice so that they can improve the final game once it comes out. Right now, Bad Company 2 is only available as a BETA. As far as I know, they are not handing out beta keys. The full game is going to come out in March, so stay tuned!

Thejode

i actually think that the regenerating healthbars are beast so now I won't get screwed by a lucky grenade. Also I really do hate the real time tank charging because it is so annoying!!!! Come on it's a game give us a break! I am all for the explosions making you fly. That is called ragdoll effects though that is extremely hard to program because just look at Star Wars the Force Unleashed and did you see the tiny story than it took forever to finnaly release the game! I also love limb damage ffects in video games because it makes you feel like you are in the game! That sounded wierd didn't it? Well I hope these things are in future games because we will need bigger processors and graphics cards for these.

[FouGilang 0]

Wow, you sure make it REAL. I like the way you describe the non-realistic things inside and how you suggest it to improve o.o I don't know what to say about the delay though, if it was because of lag connection, what we and they have to do is getting another magnificent connection? Explosion effect, rag, limb damage, hard terrain, and the health bar are great. I would prefer if there's some kind of medics that can heal yourself. It will give you more to the tactics And the tank repairing and the in-out of vehicle, my that sure will cost you much more processes and times. Let's say if you need about 3 seconds to open its door, jump in, and start the machine. Then another 2 seconds to jump out of the vehicle. But the repair, that seems neat anyway

[rayzoredge 2]

1.) The lag with cause-and-effect has to be server lag. I wouldn't imagine that DICE would have it as acceptable to have even a quarter of a second before "drawing" the desired effect on a sprite or affected surface. Your tank example reminds me of what I hated about Halo 2 on XBL when I played: going toe-to-toe with shotguns, firing, then waiting to see if you or the other guy died.2.) Fallout 3 has a decent system with limb damage, although it's not perfect. (If you shoot someone in the arm, they can drop their weapon, but after cradling their arm for a bit, they "go back to normal," pick up their weapon, and go back at shooting at you.) Not sure if anyone knows about Soldier of Fortune 2, but it had the Ghoul engine where you could selectively shoot limbs off (although this killed the target no matter what you shot off). If there was a nice balance where you could hit limbs and hamper the target's abilities to hold their weapon to steady it, run, etc., and if there was the option of complete incapacitation of a limb, I think it would be neat.3.) When a tank fires, there's a flash of flame, followed by smoke and a very, very loud BOOM. I haven't seen the tank effects of BC2 yet, but if it's anything like you described it, that's pretty realistic. Also, C4 explodes in the same way where there's a flash of fire, but mostly smoke and the dust it kicks up. (I speak from experience.) 4.) I think that they should keep the absence of the health bar but lose the regeneration. Have sound effects cue you in on your health condition, like heavier breathing, heartbeat, etc.5.) Agreed. I can't remember how many times in how many games I was shot at with a rocket, cringing and expecting immediate death, only to realize that my health dropped 50% at most. (I'll just keep in mind that in real life, I can survive 2 RPGs.) I think Doom 2 was the only game I can remember that I was pretty much dead if a Rocket Demon came my way.6.) HMMWVs are fun to drive, but they get stuck almost too easily in stupid situations like mud. Maybe DICE had the right idea. Dry, rough terrain shouldn't be too much of a problem with the HMMWV, though.7.) I'm surprised this wasn't changed.8.) Here's the toss-up: you can go for realism here or go for fun. A tank is not an easy thing to fix, and if you screw up the armor on that bad boy, you're taking off those armored skirts and replacing them. If you throw track, you're spending a day fixing that. If anything penetrates the armor AND into the interior, that tank is pretty much done for. An engine overhaul is no small feat either. As far as "tank fights" go, it's really who gets who first, because there's no recovery from a tank blast. Once that 105mm sabot round hits, it will penetrate and destroy the other tank. A single Javelin round will destroy a tank. A well-placed RPG round could probably destroy a tank in one hit, if not damage it. They should correct those damage points and take away that stupid drill. That would keep the fire superiority of the tank but also keep the opposing team with the necessity of having an anti-tank weapon at all times.I've been asking for realism from first-person shooters for a long time... and it's been a long time coming. However, I still have fun with what the games nowadays have to offer. I think that the best shooters, if you want to call them that, I've played to date would include Fallout 3 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. I've played a little bit of Crysis too, but for some reason, I wasn't drawn to it as much as I thought I would be for some reason.It's a tough call when it comes to realism, because you have to figure how much realism you want in the game before it starts to complicate things. Do you really think that every magazine you pick up in a battlefield is full? Shouldn't every magazine be different in how many rounds are in it? When you reload and put in that fresh magazine of 30 rounds into your M4, did you really take the time to take the rounds out of all the other magazines and fill that one up to 30? Is every magazine that you pick up perfect and won't jam your weapon? Will you really know how many rounds are in your magazine (unless you keep an accurate, mental count in the heat of battle)? Could you really physically carry 800 rounds of 5.56mm? (That stuff gets pretty darn heavy, let me assure you... not to mention 20 lbs in armored plate, the weight of all of your gear, the weight of your weapon, your kevlar, your equipment, etc.) And that's just the magazines... I didn't even touch on retaining natural night vision (30 minutes after you take off your NVGs, unless you use PVS-14s, which are monocular) or anything like that.

[deadmad7 4]

Why do people always strive to replicate reality within something as virtual as video games? Is it solely for the sake of immersion? That being asked, I feel that games do not need to mimic reality in order to be "immersive". Let's take the Metal Gear series for example. The kind of things that happen within the series is ridiculous. There are people contacting the dead, surviving falls from gigantic bipedal robots, controlling wasps, taking down tanks singlehandedly, using psychic powers, calculating ricochet physics precisely and instantaneously, etc. However, this series is simply compelling. You "believe" it can happen, even though common sense tells you "No f***ing way!". If this is possible, why is it that people complain about some games not being "real" enough? The entire game is artificial, yet people strive to make it as close to reality as they possibly can.