Coolguy 07/29/2019
i used the AR for basically everything [in Wolfenstein: The Old Blood] and honestly as much as i do like old blood
it's kind of exhibit A in my ongoing low-key gripe against assault rifles in basically any video game ever
like
irl
assault rifles are, no question, pretty much the finest weapon ever created in terms of killing man. you point, click, and if you are bad at either, do not worry, another attempt will be on its way in a second.
by which i mean, a literal fucking second, at most.
this isn't true of any melee weapon
it wasn't true of any firearm before it
and we haven't really gotten to a general combat weapon AFTER it, so yeah
it rules the roost
but that simplicity and elegance
also means that it is, hands down, the single most boring fucking interaction a player can have with a video game man
or that a video game man can have with a player

Salted Grump 07/29/2019
Minor caveat: the MP-46 in Wolfenstein is a battle rifle, not an assault rifle. It uses full-sized 7.92x57 cartridges instead of the intermediate 7.92x30 of the STG-44

Coolguy 07/29/2019
it really applies to any automatic rifle
it even applies to the garand in CoD1 really
you point. you click. if you are bad at either, please do not worry, you may try again in less than a second.
fighting someone with the garand is similarly uninspiring.

Lunethex🐭07/29/2019
This is why I whinge about bad shotguns.

Coolguy07/29/2019
they point. they click. if you are close up, please do not think it is not good. if you are far away, please do not celebrate. if you are missed, please do not see an opportunity in this.

Lunethex🐭07/29/2019
lol
Coolguy turning into a Hunter-Killer droid in real time

Coolguy07/29/2019
another tool may be BETTER, but it is not like, for example, the mosin or the kar98k of the same game.
if you are missed by a mosin
you DEFINITELY should see an opportunity in that.
if you are up close to a mosin user
you DEFINITELY should see an advantage there.
but any time any kind of fully automatic rifle is involved the entire interaction is boiled down to the absolute most brain-dead level of interaction possible
flanking becomes dangerous and ultimately pointless. suppression becomes a waste of ammo.
just...find a chest high wall.
crouch behind it.
poke your gun out every few moments.
click the man.
if you are bad at clicking the man, you need not worry, you will ultimately suffer no consequences and can try again before you can realize you were bad at clicking the man.
your only consequence from being bad at clicking the man will come if you are bad at clicking the man consistently for half of a magazine or more.
old blood and tno get around it to some extent by giving you so many different weapons that you want to interact with them all regardless of the MP-46's superiority in fucking everything
but it doesn't stop the overall note. an assault rifle is just the utter death of problem solving and reactions in FPS games.

ArclightBorealis 07/29/2019
Except in DOOM
In which case it's everything else

Salted Grump 07/29/2019
I'm reminded of the fact that in Call of Duty 4, You averaged 600-750 rounds of ammo for your default gun in every level.
Because the only good gun in the Modern Warfare series was the M4 SOPMOD.
In DOOM, your default weapon is a Shotgun for good reason.

ArclightBorealis07/29/2019
Speaking of which, I gotta say
I really do appreciate how with everything that's been shown of Eternal thus far
They have kept the seven weapons from 2016 that mattered
Which is basically all of your arsenal, save for the pistol, but no one seriously uses the pistol

Coolguy07/29/2019
DOOM 2016 gets around the assault rifle problem by just not giving you enough ammo for it.
which is the same solution half life 2 had with the combine rifle (which was its 'assault rifle')

ArclightBorealis07/29/2019
Combine Rifle you also did not get till halfway through the game

Salted Grump07/29/2019
I mean, 2016's AR was also generally fun because Microrockets out the arse.

Coolguy07/29/2019
it doesn't really address it though. the AR and its bigger brother the Chaingun are just what you throw at a problem when you can't be arsed to get a real solution to it

ArclightBorealis07/29/2019
Which fits with Half Life in general since those games were always pretty methodical as far as dolling out the weapons as you need them

Coolguy07/29/2019
yeah HL1 and 2 used low ammo on everything to prevent overreliance
NOTHING in either game had a very high ammo cap
if they wanted you using something, they'd just start dropping a lot of that ammo.
there was no way you could resist it for too long because even the most damage-efficient weapon, the shotgun, had enough in the tank for like 2 combat encounters without a resupply.
i see these things as the proverbial willful deafness in stealth games though.

ArclightBorealis07/29/2019
Shotgun in Half-Life 2 could literally only hold 36 shells

Coolguy07/29/2019
they're not actually addressing the problem, they're just sort of pushing its nose away and hoping you don't notice.
and much like my gripes about how stealth games are kind of fundamentally flawed and we don't know how to address it
i don't think we really know how to address the assault rifle problem either
you can't just exclude them in most cases. they're core parts of most settings.

Salted Grump07/29/2019
In HL1 the shotgun had a reserve of 125 and 8 in the tube. It was the go-to for everything except soldiers.

Coolguy07/29/2019
you could look to reality to provide you some clues on how to balance them but those aren't helpful in a lot of games. low stability isn't a problem in a game like wolfenstein, where the entire precept is that you don't have stability problems.
you can restrict their ammo but that's ducking the problem, not solving it.
i don't know what the answer is.

Salted Grump07/29/2019
And having a gun that's a crapbox and jamming often is a frustration feature punishing the player.

Coolguy07/29/2019
i don't know that there is one.
yeah
you can't go the route of "these are really complicated weapons so they're unreliable" because that's punishing the player for their existence

ArclightBorealis07/29/2019
Honestly, the genre has gone on this long that I don't know if that's necessarily the kind of problem that needs focus on
Especially when there have been other things that have seriously plagued FPS design over the years
Pretty much whenever games like Halo or Modern Warfare introduced concepts that others ran with and pummeled into the ground

Coolguy07/29/2019
i wouldn't say it's the biggest problem in FPS design but i would definitely say it's in the top 5 - homogenization of weapon content and tactical situations is a real problem even if the game is great in other ways.
FEAR 1 is an amazing game but pretty much everyone i know who ever played the game picked up the assault rifle the first time it was offered and then never put it down unless there was a very specific threat they had a different tool for.

Salted Grump07/29/2019
Melee, pistol, shotgun, bullethose, bigger bullethose, explosive, bigger explosive, bosshumper...
That's the usual loadout since OG Doom

Coolguy07/29/2019
and even then that was usually
"there's a heavy, grabbing my Penetrator"

Mr. Yar07/29/2019
the only time i liked ammo scarcity was in republic commando
and that was mostly because the best weapons to use against trandos were their own

Willis07/29/2019
Need more FPS games that have weapons that aren't traditional guns

Coolguy07/29/2019
yeah republic commando also has a GIANT assault rifle problem despite the fact that the game is fucking incredible

ArclightBorealis07/29/2019
For me I just want more shooters to follow the example that's being set by id and the franchises that are developed by other partners (Wolfenstein, RAGE 2)
And that is taking cues from character action games by just giving you a sandbox of mechanics
That are more than just "here's guns"

Coolguy07/29/2019
yeah iD does a good job of riding the core gimmick they have in mind so hard that the weapons themselves almost don't matter

ArclightBorealis07/29/2019
And can be mixed and matched in various ways

Salted Grump07/29/2019
Honestly, I think my personal mainline in DOOM '16 was the Gauss Cannon with Charge upgrade.

Coolguy07/29/2019
but wolf rides riiiiiiiight on that edge where it kinda does matter

Salted Grump07/29/2019
Boom Splert.

Willis07/29/2019
Could always take notes from painkiller and slap two guns into one.

ArclightBorealis07/29/2019
Yeah, Wolfenstein feels very much like a different kind of throwback from what DOOM 2016 was
Where New Order felt like I was warped back to the year 2006

Coolguy07/29/2019
i ignored the fucking awesome auto shotgun they have in wolf almost entirely in old blood

Coolguy07/29/2019
because i just
could not
find a situation
where that shotgun was substantially better
than just clicking the fucking man

Salted Grump07/29/2019
Because it made louder boom and looked cooler?

Coolguy07/29/2019
i actually literally never used the sawed-off shotgun they gave you
how fucking lame is that

ArclightBorealis07/29/2019
Still, the other alternative for me is that more games take influence from Devil's Third in terms of combining TPS and melee action mechanics, but that would require having more voices than just my own to tell people that Devil's Third is an actually good game

Coolguy07/29/2019
metro honestly has the best go at solving the assault rifle problem imo
and metro just does it by having enemies that just flat do not give a fuck about assault rifles
you better be packing a shotgun or a DMR for most kinds of mutants
because if it's anything tougher than a nosalis it ain't doing shit

Salted Grump07/29/2019
Another thing to note: In all the Metro games, damage is standardized to ammunition, with a bit of wiggle room in Exodus because longer barrels allow higher velocity which equals better bullet penetration.

Willis07/29/2019
Usually not much of a problem for me. I've always liked to use the big single shot weapons.

Coolguy07/29/2019
single shot weapons are fine from a game perspective to me because there's real consequences if you miss your shot
which means that, under heavy pressure
the weapon is not appropriate

Salted Grump07/29/2019
One thing that was a Rude shock going from OG 2033 to LL between 2009 and 2012? Nosalis in LL were about 4 times tougher and twice as punishing.

Coolguy07/29/2019
the entire problem to me with assault rifles it that there's no real negative consequences for its use
under any circumstances

Willis07/29/2019
AI in most shooters are usually easy enough to plink in the head.

Coolguy07/29/2019
i ultimately think that's probably where the AR problem will have to be solved
is in AI

Willis07/29/2019
Pretty much

Coolguy07/29/2019
if you shoot at a dude with your AR, the target should pretty much immediately assume that any popping around will get its head blown off

Willis07/29/2019
AI tends to just hunker up into cover and not really move except to try and chase after you.

Coolguy07/29/2019
and try to do something to force you to move or take cover

Salted Grump07/29/2019
Killzone's AI did a good job of forcing you out of the AR comfort zone, actually, because those bastards would so anything to avoid getting shot.

Coolguy07/29/2019
or literally just communicate with their teammates and be like
"i'm pinned down, make him move'

Willis07/29/2019
Some games will have them throw grenades but there's usually enough room to just run over to another safe spot

Coolguy07/29/2019
the other part to the flush portion of that is that the AIs that do the flushing
will not communicate BACK to their pinned teammates to make them move
not even FEAR 1 did that
AIs would have a rudimentary understanding of when they were pinned
and they would call for flanks and flushes
but when a grenade came out there would be no coordinated movement by the freed teammates

Willis07/29/2019
I wonder if you could introduce different enemy types to help with that

Salted Grump07/29/2019
Reminds me a little of the mechanics in that Gearbox-made WW2 shooter, where you had two fireteams; you were supposed to suppress or pin enemy forces, while getting your buddies to advance and wipe out emplacements that you kept pinned.

Coolguy07/29/2019
the band of brothers series
that was from your perspective though, AIs were incapable of moving like that
part of it is level design i guess. there's a lot of moments in both wolf games so far where you are having encounters along a single corridor with shit in it.

Salted Grump07/29/2019
And the Nazis loved brutalist architecture, so it's all concrete and crennelation.

Coolguy07/29/2019
even irl that would basically be a stalemate until someone called in fire support or someone got twitchy and fucked up
i mean you can like brutalist architecture, whatever, but when a level has one ingress and egress and there's a no-man's in between
there's not much either player or AI can do to make that situation interesting
you can at least mess with the problem a little if nobody has an assault rifle so there's dudes with SMGs or shotguns up front and DMR nerds in back
and you can catalog threats differently or whatever
but when everyone has an assault rifle nothing can happen besides click the man
but even in that case, that's the assault rifle accentuating the problem, not causing it
the level's the primary cause there

Salted Grump07/29/2019
Wait until you get the shotgun in TNO. And its Altfire.

Coolguy07/29/2019
anyway. real point is. assault rifles in games make them more boring pretty much as a rule and the industry really needs to grow past that.
and i'm not really entirely sure hwo it does so.
this has been random musings while i delay my decision of feargus vs wyatt and i think i'm gonna kill feargus