15th May 2018 - What does tight gunplay mean?

Leonardo Da Sidci - Yesterday at 8:47 PM
Today's Topic - 15th May 2018

submitted by Leonardo Da Sidci

Lots of people praise a game for “tight gunplay” and “great shooting.” What does that even mean?

It’s been used as a means to describe games like Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike Global Offensive, Battlefield, Call of Duty, PUBG. But they all play differently. What does “great shooting” and “tight gunplay” mean in these games?

Sentay - Yesterday at 8:53 PM
At least for me great shooting describes the weapon's effect on the world (the sound of the action, the effects of the bullets connecting, are there tracers to make the bullets visible, are there misc objects to break [tiles, glass ware, splinters, etc]). Wheras tight gunplay is how the weapon feels to the player does the gun have a comfortable fire rate, is the recoil hard but manageable, does it reload in a way that is aesthetically pleasing, does it have enough ammo that the player feels comfortable in engaging in direct combat). That said tight gunplay also has system based application, a game with tight gunplay is frequently seen as a game where all the guns have a purpose to fill. I think that all of these aspects need to be in balance otherwise things get "weird" (like how in Shadow Warrior 1 & 2 all your guns have a super low fire rate to make modding them a viable thing, or how in Goldeneye / Perfect Dark your guns feel great but the way that you aim gives them a light almost floaty feeling).

Doki - Yesterday at 8:56 PM
When people are talking about "tight gunplay” and “great shooting", they usually talk about how does the game feels like when you are playing it. Tight gunplay for me means that the animation and gun movements and animations, etc. the whole part that isn't shooting handles well. The great shooting for me talks about the actual shooting part, recoil, spraying, stopping power. The external force that comes out of the gun, so the part where I interact with the world around me via shooting it.

Penny the Dullahan - Yesterday at 9:05 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuqImZKygvw
i find that this is the best resource for explaining this topic, even though it focuses on only TF2.
and i am sorry for this very short skirt length.
EDIT: i will attempt a proper one when i get home, cant do it at school. but this will be more comprehensive then i will ever be

ahdapting - Yesterday at 9:05 PM
To me "great shooting" is when its very accurate, the movement is crisp and responsive, and it rewards skill. CS:GO is a great game to use as an example. The weapons are very accurate, and the movement is smooth and very responsive. In other games however, "good gunplay" can mean something else. Battlefield for example has the sounds, the effectcs, the particles, the textures etc.

I think these things are vital for a game to be successful. All the best fps games on the market right now (CS:GO, Battlefield, CoD, Rainbow 6, etc) share great gunplay. A game can have the best graphics, the best you name it, but if the game lacks good gun mechanics and good movement, it will probably fail.

lilbud - Yesterday at 9:12 PM
his is from the perspective from someone who not only designs and creates games where shooting is a focus, but has also played the majority of the named games, 3 of them quite avidly and also many other games with "great shooting," and also many with bad shooting mechanics.

When someone says tight gunplay or great shooting I think the main idea that they're trying to come across is that the shooting is responsive, accurately gives the feeling of the gun, and its value as a gun is reflective of its feeling.
What that means is a few things and my points tie into each other a lot.  I'll go over some examples and elaborate below.

A responsive gun is one in a game that when shot gives the player the right feedback to shooting. This means that it plays the right sounds, gives the right knockback and just has the responsiveness and feedback that you would feel you would get from that gun within the context of the game. So in call of duty multiplayer for instance, all the games have this somewhat arcadey feel to them  and thus the guns respond to you in quick punchy ways. So in that game, at least in my opinion, guns feel tight as all the guns give consistent and good feedback to the player when shooting and they're not as realistic sounding as other games. Call of duty gun sounds are tight and kind of to the point. It reflects well on the game itself and adds to the feel of the whole experience.

Counter strike is amazing at this concept. When I shoot an AK in say counter strike,  I should feel and see the kickback and power that the gun has. With the realistic tactical kind of vibe CS goes for, it would be weird for it to have Call of duty quick punchy feel to it. So for the CS AK they chose to give it a very powerful sound, high recoil, and high damage not only for balancing but also for good gun feel. Imagine how much shittier the CSGO ak would feel if it had no recoil or did bad damage. It would feel wrong and not just because we're accustomed the the real version. There are probably 100 examples of this in CS. Everything from the feel and damage of the AWP compared to the Scout, and its also probably why they changed the negev sound when they rebalanced the weapon as they wanted the negev's gun feel to make sense. The current negev would be weird with the old sound.

TF2 is a weird case as its tight gameplay isn't as focused on gun feel but more on its tight gameplay and interactions between classes in the various situations players are put in.
Its also a lot more focused on hitsounds than the guns themselves in my opinion. It feels pretty good shooting a gun, but it feels amazing hitting something with it. Lazy purple touches on this in a video he made that someone above referenced, I would watch it for more on that

Another example of tight gunplay that isn't one of those examples is nuclear throne. Nuclear throne has some of the best gunplay in any game I've played before in my life.
Its good use of screenshake and wonderfully made gunsounds along with guns feeling the way they act balance wise is amazing. It's enemies are also balanced around the gunplay not the other way around.
Vlambeer specifically makes their enemies quick to kill to make their games feel better and tighter. Once again there is a video on this which you can watch here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJdEqssNZ-U

So in short, tight gunplay or great shooting in think comes mainly from how a gun feels to shoot and how its feeling is expressed through its balance as a weapon in a game.
I wrote this kinda fast so hopefully there aren't too many errors or what not. I hope whoever read this enjoyed!

Sentay - Yesterday at 9:22 PM
I'd also like to bring up a somewhat tangential factor the character of the weapon and it's relation to the character of the player (I'm stretching the definition of the word character but the alternative term gunness is kinda lame so I'm doing it anyway). What I mean to say is that in addition to the mechanical system side of things all weapons / tools / whatever have an amount of human intent in their construction. Shotguns are the perfect example of this they typically are only good at short range their accuracy is poor, they tend to reload slowly, and their ammo is usually not super common... BUT most players adore shotguns because it's a weapon with a lot of character it has a focus (close range damage) it has weaknesses (range, accuracy) and it fight against you in a way (reloads slowly, sometimes fires slowly). While the "ideal" weapon may vary well be a low recoil, ammo rich, medium damage, fully automatic rifle / smg (depending on circumstances) that's just not very interesting either in use or feeling. Players will tend to use what works (this is true in all things) but if a weapon can work and do it's work in a way which has some penache, then players will go for it IF they like the cut of its jib (so to speak). Additional examples: the arc of grenade launchers, the slow speed / insane damage of rockets, the pricklyness of beam weapons (tracing), high recoil weapons (revolvers, sniper rifles, some assault rifles, small smgs). If a weapon is made with practical intent that's good (both real world and not) but if a weapon can excell in it's job whilst also doing it in it's own way that's better (in most but not all cases, depends on the game).

Silen - Yesterday at 9:44 PM
To me, it really depends on the goal that the game sets out to achieve and how well the weapons handle to suit the gameplay set by the devs.

If a game sets out to be a highly competitive shooter, it must have tactical gameplay and easy-to-learn/hard-to-master weapon mechanics. For example, CS:GO has both of these, but it suffers (or at least used to before I quit) from badly coded hitboxes and horrible servers, so I'd argue the game really misses out on the potential ''gunplay'' it can offer. Yet when you play it on something like Faceit, it feels great, because hit detection is not hindered by lagg or low tick rate, the weapons themselves are tightly balanced and really nice to use. PUBG on the other hand, while buggy and laggy as hell at launch, is constantly getting patches and fixes, balance changes, etc. on top of the already great weapon system to solidify its place as a top level shooter. The weapons themselves are authentic, customizations feel great and make you look forward to what you'll stumble upon and most importantly, your skill with the weapons and attachments decides whether you'll win and eat imaginary chicken or lose and yell ''one more'' 2 am in the night.

In my opinion, the same can't be said for something like Call of Duty or Battlefield franchises, because these games do not have the same level of competitive focus and, while they are still great shooters that millions of fans enjoy, they focus more on a run & gun type of play, especially CoD. That's absolutely fine, as you can fiddle with numerous weapons and play the game as you want to play it, without being tied down to meta-game tactics. You jump into the fray, the action is everywhere and you're constantly looking for targets to kill, even if you die, you're quickly revived, therefore the gunplay in this case is satisfying to those who crave for constant action rather than tactical approach.

GirlRoss(DoF) - Yesterday at 11:29 PM
There's a lot going on in regards to this topic for me because many of my favorite shooters are quite aged at this point and the limitations they faced when they were designed informed a lot of the product. My favorite example of tight gameplay though comes from Tribes 2. It was a meticulous, futuristic shooter with a variety of weapons that were beaiutifully designed in terms of sound and feel. The Spinfuso in Tribes 2 is still my favorite weapon in any shooter ever and my favorite depiction of that weapon. Every time you fire an energy disc from it it sounds like you've just let a futuristic buzz saw loose from a sci-fi power tool. There are a lot of graphical limitations in how the game conveys hits that haven't aged well, but the sound design for it so beautifully and insistently conveys what you're shooting or doing that it is still truly satisfying to play.

Also the game had what I would describe as good shooting, but not in the conventional sense that we're conversant in when talking about games like Counter-Strike. Only two weapons in the game were hitscan. But every weapon felt like it had a purpose and was easy to learn how to use effectively. Fusion Mortars are amazing hand-artillery cannons that fire loudly hissing rounds that are hard to predict, but any player can pull out a target painter and mark a fixed pisition and you will land thar round on the nose, or you could shoot it at your feet and jet away quickly while the charge roared like a jet engine winding up to explode in an enemy generator room.
Good shooting has an unusual place in more sci-fi titles where weapons can have much more widely varying applications, is what I'm driving at. There's a lot of interdependency between the two aspects of designing shooter combat. It's difficult to distill the two as we're doing now, but when trying to be more experimental in the shooters that are designed, I think it's important to remrmber why "tight gunplay," and "good shooting," feel so interlocked.

FoxTrottts (they/them) - Yesterday at 11:53 PM
For me, the biggest single factor that affects what I would label as "tight gunplay" is sound. If a gun sounds flat and lifeless, like the guns in Homefront, then it loses a lot of its meaning. It loses how it feels, and changes it from a weapon capable of ending lives to little more than a nerf gun firing foam darts. On the opposite end of that spectrum, personally, are the weapons in the halo games, but specifically, Halo: Combat Evolved.

The loud, deep and dense thud of the magnum was a great reflection of the weapon's overpowered nature, the piercing, higher pitched explosion from the Sniper Rifle that, while as stealthy as hydrogen bomb site, made it extremely satisfying to use, the shotgun's more neutral grounded bang that got lower in pitch towards the end sounded like a gut bunch, and then followed by the familiar and always satisfying "chik chik" when cocking the shotgun, and all 3 of them mirrored their power within the game. It felt good and fun to use them, and as a result I had one of those 3 weapons on me as often as I could manage.

"Tight Gunplay" is something i feel is hard to nail down, because that's what it is. Its a feeling. You feel the impact of each shot and that's heavily reliant on sound (as well as target/environment reactions to this shot) and bad sound effects can cripple player satisfaction.

As for great shooting, that's much more reliant on the targets, player, environment, and how the player moves about this environment, while also utilising sound in the similar ways to what defines great shooting. My example for this is going to be Call of Duty: Black Ops 3's multiplayer. It allows the player to move in many ways around their environment, leading to situations of flanking and enemy, getting the drop on them, and overpowering the enemy due to your ability at thinking of and testing new ideas on how to get round a target to hit them in the butt and catch them off guard, and Black Ops 3's wall running allowed this to happen with me many times. It makes death more frustrating, as they don't feel deserved, but it makes the kills feel much more satisfying.

How an enemy reacts to being killed is a fairly large factor as well, I'd argue. If the enemy just falls to the floor, again, it can feel flat and undeserved, whereas an overly elaborate one can make the player waste ammo shooting what is, effectively, a corpse.

May 16, 2018
Peppers - Today at 12:58 AM
I mean,  I think 'tight gunplay' is largely just a buzzword/phrase. The way I interpret is that each gunfight is:
1. Responsive to the player's commands (leaning, ADS, etc.)
2. Fair and consistent - no weird rules or exceptions
3. Interesting and new in each encounter
I might be a bit biased, but the only time I've actually seen this done solid is either in 'pioneer' games like Quake, or Rainbow Six Siege. The latter mainly because it's revolving around being close-quarters and tactical. That, coupled with the fact that you can be shot at from above, below or through walls, and people can break down half the map, makes for one of my favourite and intense gunplay experiences.(edited)

Broreale - Today at 4:03 AM
There's an environmental aspect to this whole phrase, too. I think tight gunplay could only realistically be applied to competitive shooters. ARMA by no means has great gunplay, but I'd never want to have Rainbow Six: Siege's gun physics on an open outdoor map. Thinking back on it, even the worst aspects of old Ghost Recon had to do with going inside and clearing buildings, and even that was in a PvE game. It's pretty limiting to have "tight gunplay" because polish requires a bit of streamlining.

UnknownSir - Today at 4:21 AM
Essentially what people think to what makes a good shooter is usually consists well defined graphics and balanced gameplay. Although there is much more than that, the complexity of the game is what makes it more interesting as it pushes the player to experience more of the game in order for him/her to get the sensation of accomplishment. For example, overwatch, a game most of us are familiar with introduces the player with an infinite amount of ways to encounter a situation. From ultimates to team composition, every aspect of the game provides so much things to discover. As call of duty also tried to do something similar by introducing exo suits but didnt work because their implementation of the tool wasnt very well executed as it was very restrictive on what you can do with it. Compared to overwatch, implemented many things instead of just the regular run-and-gun kind of games we used to see. Because of its complexity and its wide variety of skill sets the game was incredibly successful, even winning the game of the year award.

Note: i apologize to my writing as my fluidity wont be as smooth compared to all the other amazing discourses(edited)