Friday, April 3, 2015

Best Weapon in a Game? Pt.2 (an aside)



We need guns...


(the gif is from a movie called the Matrix, which was one of the early films from The Wachowskis whose most recent work is the movie Jupiter Ascending. Like their other work, the Matrix includes impressive visual style, an indulgent, geeky theme (In this case cyberpunk themes and hong kong action films) and never received a sequel.)

Let's talk about guns.

In this post I'm mostly gonna talk about my criteria for what makes a good weapon in a first person shooter. It would be irresponsible to talk about how awesome guns are but have no criteria for evaluating them. With no criteria or method for evaluation I would just be writing a list based on popularity and my subjective meandering experience. It would also be next to impossible to have a meaningful discussion and hinder the possibility of finding additional relevant criteria to guns in first person shooters. With this in mind, I find that the criteria comes down to two attributes, the Gameplay Niche and the Utility.

The criteria themselves may not be perfect, but they help to better align the direction for each weapon. The 'Gameplay Niche' is the roll that the gun fills in a shooter and how well it fits into the core of what a shooter is. The 'Utility' covers the depth that the gun creates, and can be thought of as a measure of the creative uses for the weapon and how the weapon changes the game.

Gameplay Niche
To better illustrate the Gameplay Niche, lets take a look at something that clearly isn't a very good weapon in a first person shooter, a key-card. Key cards open doors. On the other hand, a grenade is a much better weapon in a first person shooter. It defeats enemies. You can make an fps without the ability to open doors, however an FPS without enemies is really more of a first person puzzle game. It's not a bad game, it's just not a shooter.

Utility
To better explain Utility, lets compare two guns, a pistol and a rocket launcher. A pistol can shoot stuff, but has no penetration, no other special abilities. A rocket launcher in this instance has a blast that can move physics objects and damage/destroy crates, and does splash damage based on the distance (and its possibly hitting more targets at once). You can also perform a 'rocket jump' maneuver with the rocket launcher. Thus the rocket launcher has more Utility than the pistol. Utility is how a weapon changes or expands the possible actions you can take with a weapon.

A more complicated Utility example would be ADS* or Grenade Launcher on an assault rifle. Which expands the possible actions of the gun more? How many different scenarios would you want the grenade launcher ability vs the ADS? Honestly, the answer is going to be found in your game, and there is always the possibility that ADS supports the Gameplay Niche better than the grenade launcher. It's something the game designer will decide.


*ADS is an acronym for Aim Down Sights, or 'iron sights' of a gun, typically this reduces a players movement ability and restricts their vision in favor for more accurate fire, against further targets. This is replaced a lot of secondary fire functions that were seen in first person shooters made in the early millennial period. Fans are divided on whether or not ADS was a positive development in first person shooters.