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[–] RevanProdigalKnight ago  (edited ago)

His point about removing weapons in FPS games is undermined by the fact that it's impractical to carry more than 3-4 weapons (depending on the type of weapon, of course) at once in most scenarios. Early FPS games were actually quite unrealistic in this regard, allowing one to pick up however many weapons they wanted to and use them all provided one had ammunition for the weapon. While at first I hated it, Halo's limitation of only being able to carry two weapons at a time forces the player to think about what sort of weapons they should carry into any given conflict based on their effectiveness against different types of enemies and the amount of ammunition on hand.

Also, I think part of the reason that most games still stick to WASD + Mouse on PC and plain old controllers on consoles is because if we had a specialized controller for every kind of game, people wouldn't be able to afford to buy both the games and their respective controllers (not to mention store them). Sometimes you have to make do with what people have.

As far as other elements of "vestigial" gameplay are concerned, there are some valid points in the video; the rule of 3, repeated actions, boss battles, etc. But without these sorts of "vestigial" elements, what is a game aside from an interactive story?

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[–] Zquareman 0 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago 

The argument for or against realistic carrying limitations in shooters is really dependent on the specific game. It worked fine in Halo and it works fine in other games, but it should not be the nearly universal standard that it is right now. There are many differences between early 'twitch' shooters and Halo but certainly one of the most obvious is pacing: Halo is a very slow game compared to, say, Doom or Quake or Serious Sam, and it makes sense to couple that slowness with resource management if only to give you something to do. For more fast paced games that emphasize 'fun' over realism, however, the weapon limitation is a boring, unnecessary nod to reality. Carrying limitations also change the overall dynamic of gameplay wherein the situations a weapon might be best used for are too distant to justify using one of your two or three slots and the player is reliant on the map/scenario designer to provide the weapon again at the appropriate time (which may or may not be unrealistic anyway). Too much of the game is spent suffering through using only two weapons (out of three) for fear of losing access to a powerful one like a rocket launcher or BFG that is only situationally appropriate, and when I start using the word 'suffer' I have to wonder why I am even playing games, if it is not to have fun?

As soon as I started up Duke Nukem Forever and saw that there was a weapon limitation I knew I was in for a bad time and I was not wrong. The concept has its place (specifically in military shooters, imo) but I will be pissed as all hell if Halflife 3 doesn't let me carry 14 weapons.

I honestly think part of the reason for weapon carrying limitations is the difficulty of effective weapon selection on consoles; even that 'hold one button and choose with the stick' thing is a thousand times slower than hitting 5, or 5 twice, or whatever. Realism is all well and good but let's fucking face it, you take enough damage in every FPS to die 6 million times over but you go back to full health after 10 seconds or rubbing against a medkit, we're already splitting hairs as soon as anyone uses the word 'realism' in conjunction to FPS games.

[–] [deleted] ago 

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