Weapons as related to Video Games (and what you hate about them)

[CloudFlash]

many games (like Doom 3 and most other shooters) give you a shotgun 10 minutes into the game and you immediately have the pistol outclassed for almost any reason or use thereafter.

You just reminded me of one game, Alice: Madness Returns... in that game, you had only 4 weapons (kitchen knife, pepper gun, hobby horse and tea cannon), but you could upgrade every one of them 4 times, which in total gives you 16 weapons... You could use your points to make your first weapon best, so there was no putting any weapon away; each one was equally good, at least until you started upgrading only one of them instead of raising all of them... Some of them were more effective against one enemy, some others were weak against same enemy...

[Cruduxy]

Pistols can be very useful.. playing brothers in arms without all the UI stuff, even knowing how much ammo is left in your weapon magazine -aka max difficulty- will show how useful and great the pistol can be.. doesn't take much time to iron sight compared to any other weapon and with good aiming it can be as useful as almost any weapon (aside from bazooka but that gives you very low ammo count).

[TheBladeRoden]

Hand grenades are certainly the wild card of FPS's. In some games they are ineffective, due to either nerfed damage or a glowy danger icon when one's nearby. And in other games (particularly WWII ones it seems) people spam them so much you can't walk anywhere without randomly exploding.

[Catastrophe]

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[Spottswoode]

You can survive but it's not likely. I'll admit the rocket damage is shaky. Damage runs from 148 - 288. At full health you can survive.

[VoltlocK]

You guys really think pistols suck? Did you ever played Silent Hill, where most of weapons are things like steel pipes or knives? Pistols in those games are true blessing, even if they are slow, not accurate and weak shits.

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Sadly, pistols aren't this good in MW3...

[Ijon Tichy]

Anyway....my peeve with pistols has to do with building obsolete weapons into the game. It's fine if you upgrade on a linear path, but many games (like Doom 3 and most other shooters) give you a shotgun 10 minutes into the game and you immediately have the pistol outclassed for almost any reason or use thereafter. I don't think the pistol should be a power weapon or in the middle in terms of power (unless it's a heavy pistol like a large caliber magnum) but throwing it in there as the weakest weapon makes it useless most of the time. (Some games balance it out with headshots like Resident Evil 4.) Might as well go Quake and start you off with a moderately useful weapon.

i thought the general solution to that was make pistols very accurate, but kinda weak
which makes no sense if you think about it for all of two seconds - why would a tiny, one-handed weapon which amplifies any shaking in your hand(s) be more accurate than a rifle whose design and weight mostly nullifies shaking?
wouldn't it make more sense for pistols to just be the quick weapon to pull out at any time (maybe even be able to use it when reloading, and to hell as to where the third arm goes), have it do a medium-low amount of damage (but enough to still be a threat), and fairly inaccurate (because, again, shakiness)?

[Reaku]

Klobb...that's that shitty machine pistol in Goldeneye 007 isn't it?

Why does everyone hate the Klobb? I love the damn thing, and I can actually use it!
On another note, I have a distaste for grenade launchers that don't work properly.

[ClonedPickle]

Desert Eagle

The Desert Eagle! Good christ am I sick of the Desert Eagle. I can respect it in a few games; Counter-Strike is one of them for your character twirling it on his finger like it ain't no thang (GO doesn't have this, though, which is lame), Killing Floor and GTA4 have non-7 ammo counts, making it seem like they're chambered for .44 and .357 magnum, respectively. It's just a completely impractical weapon when chambered for .50AE given the ridiculous weight, recoil, and caliber, and in the magical world of ~Hollywood video games~ it's the BEST GUN EVER because it's also the BIGGEST HANDGUN YEAHHHHH.

It's dumb.

[Spottswoode]

I hate the .500 for the same reason, although as a one shot kill the .500 is definitely an effective weapon. Assuming you don't crack you skull with the recoil. In general, yeah, .50 and .500 weapons are not practical for combat in real life. They are made to kill things in one shot, but most people can't hit the broad side of a fence. On that note,

i thought the general solution to that was make pistols very accurate, but kinda weak
which makes no sense if you think about it for all of two seconds - why would a tiny, one-handed weapon which amplifies any shaking in your hand(s) be more accurate than a rifle whose design and weight mostly nullifies shaking?
wouldn't it make more sense for pistols to just be the quick weapon to pull out at any time (maybe even be able to use it when reloading, and to hell as to where the third arm goes), have it do a medium-low amount of damage (but enough to still be a threat), and fairly inaccurate (because, again, shakiness)?

Ijon, most people who use pistols professionally in real life NEVER use a pistol one handed unless they absolutely have to. Pistols are accurate compared to some assault rifles but they have a far more limited effective range. (Usually owing to the cartridge and the mechanisms in the firearms.) Pistols are certainly inaccurate when compared to battle rifles and sniper rifles, but they are a more effective choice in some circumstances than assault rifles. At close to medium range, a pistol in the hands of an experienced user can be just as accurate as a rifle. Beyond that, rifles have a large advantage. I do agree with a pistol being a quick weapon, but its only as accurate as the user in the end. (And in COD everyone is either an elite operative or a terrorist.) Also most people who use a pistol poorly are either inexperienced in combat or aiming down the sight incorrectly (you'd be surprised how many cops this encompasses) at the moment of truth.

Shakiness is the reason almost nobody can use a pistol past 1oo yards effectively. I'm not saying it's not a problem, it's just not the reason people can't hit the broad side of a barn.

[Razgriz]

Realism is dead in shooters, nothing does the damage it should and probably never will.

[Qent]

Klobb...that's that shitty machine pistol in Goldeneye 007 isn't it?

Why does everyone hate the Klobb? I love the damn thing, and I can actually use it!

Actually I was thinking of the Prometheus R, although that's not a FPS.

[Weiss]

I make a point to use the pistol in every game I've played recently; I don't particularly care how ineffective it is.

Plus, if you're good enough with the pistol in Resident Evil 5, you'll find it's the only weapon you need up until the zombies/infected people start getting leg and body armor (and on bosses of course, I would hate to be stuck with the pistol while fighting a boss). One or two shots in the leg, they go down, you run around them and snap their neck. Simple, and it doesn't waste my ammunition for my big guns.

That being said, I hate how it seems like every sniper rifle (in any game) I ever try to use seems to have this ungodly sway. Like yeah, I get that it's super zoomed in and that every little motion you make can cause the rifle to sway a bit, but a lot of games just seem ridiculous. I feel like I shouldn't have to lay down hold my breath to get my rifle to stop swaying for a couple seconds, and in games like Fallout 3 where you can't hold your breath to stop the sway, the sniper rifle is especially hard to use (at least as far as I remember, anyway), so I tend to avoid it like the plague. Which sucks, because I love sniping things.

[NeuralStunner]

I make a point to use the pistol in every game I've played recently; I don't particularly care how ineffective it is.

I make a point of at least trying them. On the off chance they follow the better methods of balance.

I don't mind a pistol that's relatively weak (but not too weak), as long as it's accurate and quick to fire/reload. (I think playing around with TimeSplitters 3 got me a little spoiled.)

Halo (first episode) had pretty much the best kind of pistol. The fast fire and reload, but by no means weak. Naturally this ruled DMs (because frankly where wouldn't it rule) so they had to screw it up in the sequel (which I never got far into, for various reasons).

This is why I design weapons with heavy fun factor and versatility. Sure they have their weaknesses (pistols have small magazines, machine guns go wild unless burst-fired), but I try to avoid making them obsolete at any point. Even starting weapons should remain useful throughout the game: One way you can do this (at least in Doom style) is to give each weapon its own ammunition. When two weapons don't have to compete over resource usage, it removes a notable amount of obsoletion potential.

[HexaDoken]

Spottswoode, stop trying to apply realism to whatever exists. If we go your way towards Ijon's post, then we have a much bigger problem than someone using a pistol with a single hand. We have a problem of someone RELOADING THEIR DAMN WEAPON with a single hand, which would require either a magazine standing on the flat surface, ages, or a third hand. Not to mention that we are as well busy with shooting someone to death.

The thing is that the idea is quite interesting - pistols are useless on their own, but they are your "OH SHI-" weapon, becoming the very last defensive measure in case the enemy has caught you reloading a man portable las cannon(which by the way takes around 15 seconds so gulp). It doesn't provoke much choices(and I think everything should provoke choices), unless there are multiple pistols or you're having severe ammo issues(I mean unless the latter one happens you don't stand there thinking "can I get away from this without using pistol or I have to shoot it?", you just fire the damn thing), but still, it grants a justifiable way to waste pistol ammo, so when you take a quick peer at your possessions you don't find 500 pistol bullets there sitting for god knows how long already, like it usually happens.

I'd say that if the idea is interesting for gameplay but completely stupid for realism you just scrap the realism, grow the character a third hand and invest hand-held nucclear missile launchers, even if they break laws of thermodynamics and such.

What I hate about weapons? I hate when there are multiple weapons which fill the same purpose. Example? Quake 4. There are machinegun, hyperblaster, nailgun and thunderbolt(I despite the "shaft" name and use the quake 1 title because it sounds epic). In DM theese weapons are actually different - thunderbolt is your full-auto Railgun equivalent, nailgun is a hard to use, but formidable damage dealer, hyperblaster is "good luck dodging that, bro" type of weapon, and machinegun is useful in situations where you would prefer Thunderbolt but also don't want to give away your position. So every weapon has it's own scope of usage, which overlap often but are still far from being identical. But in singleplayer all 4 weapons are just plain full auto damage dealers. Of course, they have differences. Machinegun has a scope - which is useless because there aren't any long ranges right until you lay your hands on a railgun. Hyperblaster can receive bouncer upgrade - which is also useless because you can waste much less ammo by simply charging in and unloading shots. Nailgun can receive two upgrades - a double mag upgrade, and homing nails upgrade, former being useless because reloads are quick and usually don't happen before the end of battle anyway, and latter being useless because all enemies are either unable to dodge properly at all, or can dodge your homing nails perfectly. Thunderbolt can receive a chain lightning upgrade which makes it more useful against crowds - which, on the other side, overlaps it with grenade/rocket launchers.

Why should that ever bother me? Because I was always trying to find a different zones of use for each of the above weapons, and failing utterly. Until I just forced myself to use hyperblaster regardless of situation, I was always thinking panicly "what weapon should I use? what weapon should I use? what weap-*fails to notice a rocket and gets hit*", and well, dying rapidly.

Oh. Also, GL/RL overlaps. Add the railgun when we talk about bosses, because it's clearly useless as anything else than a damage dealer - we don't have much long ranged combats here and there aren't any situations where enemies line up nicely at all(not to mention that you must get an upgrade for that first.)

[Spottswoode]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... sFantastic


I only seek a consistent approach to the game's specific setting of realism. A mundane world (COD) has no need for a jacket that saves you from dying by a missile to the face. Games can have ridiculous wacky over the top weapons provided they apply them in a consistent or somewhat logical manner.

Also, I was talking about people shooting guns one handed. Reloading guns one handed is almost never done in video games.

[Synert]

Reloading guns one handed is almost never done in video games.

Akimbo shotguns. mother of god

[CloudFlash]

Why would someone reload gun with one hand only? Because of a sandwich in other hand? O_o

[Ijon Tichy]

Also, I was talking about people shooting guns one handed. Reloading guns one handed is almost never done in video games.

This is the land of plasma rifles, automatic rocket launchers, shotguns that never need shells loaded, a chainsaw with infinite gas, a lightweight, fully automatic room clearer, and a fist that makes people EXPLODE when punched. Also, Doom pistol is perfectly accurate when tapped (as is the chaingun), and is fired with Doomguy's off hand.

Also, as Synert said, akimbo shotguns reloaded one-handed (zero-handed?). Good game.

I still see the pistol as a weapon that should more or less always be in your off-hand, so you can fire it basically whenever you want, provided you're not firing anything else (melee is fine). Leave the sniping to the snipers - that's their job, let them do it.

[Spottswoode]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hjhx_K3_wco

That's not reloading. That's cocking the shotgun. When the magazine is empty you have to reload it. In case you guys forget how guns work. :) Both hands go down to reload the shotguns. So unless the other hand is doing something else, we can just assume that both hands are involved in the reloading process.


Also the Doom weapon mechanics are screwy, they have also not been the focus of this thread.


Edit: I also agree with the consensus that pistols should not be tiny sniper rifles. Heavy damage should be left to heavy weapons. I just don't like it when devs make it only useful on the first level because it immediately becomes outclassed in every area.