My ideal FPS would be...

[Paladin]

I was thinking tonight about that kind of FPS I want when rereading an editorial on Rainbow Six: Vegas where the author was lamenting the loss of the "strategic" portions of the game, being able to preplan missions and ability to give remote orders to teammates.

Here's what I would want...

It should be Massively Multiplayer. I fondly remember the battles of the Planetside Beta. While the game itself was an unending series of control point battles, which ultimately proved boring, there was something very satisfying about being one of hundreds of soldiers in a battle. The most fun servers for Battlefield 2 & 2142 have 48 or 64 people on them. They are fun, but the more the merrier (so long as the servers are designed for it). So, what I'd like is a game with publisher-hosted servers with over 100 per side, and missions which can be won, allowing a new map to start, preventing some of the staleness Planetside suffered from.

It needs to be near future. As much as I like UT, I really prefer something a little closer to realistic in my ideal FPS. However, I don't really want "modern" weapons, when something 25-50 years in the future would open up some more interesting possibilities.

In real life, I can climb a hill and pull out some binoculars and see for miles. The trend the last few years with PC games has been to improve close-range detail at the expense of long-range view. This leads to terrible pop ups, and makes some of the long range weapons in alot of games pointless. I'd gladly have more simple models if I could see them from much further away.

[Reaver]

Honestly, I think my ideal fps would be Tribes with vehicles that are actually worth using. With Peltast, Hoplite and Myrmidon armors much more narrowly defined in regards to armor power, speed and weapons capabilities.

Some of the best times I ever had were in that window of play where skiiing had just begun to be widely used, but before the HO and mine disc'ing took root.

Riding into battle in waves of APCs was just awesome.

Oh yeah, and there would be absolutely no CTF or Rabbit allowed.

[Falhawk]

Enemy Territory's campaign system was the closest I've seen in a while to meaningful non-ctf gameplay

I loved it.

For CTF I just miss the pure speed and freedom of all-axis movement of T1. I just can't play anymore because I totally suck

[Orion]

T1 was easily the best FPS. Sans Heavy Skiining.

[Medic]

I too miss Tribes something aweful. Maybe with zombies.

[Falhawk]

I loved heavy skiing. It forced light defenders to innovate and come up with ways to stop them

thus body blocking and the powerful mine disk

[jackrabbit]

My ideal fps is 60.

[Patton]

My ideal FPS would be a Star Wars MMO game where the combat is based on the Jedi Knight games' combat system, not based on dice rolls the way it is now. Imagine getting into huge persistent battles where your FPS skills are more important that how much time you've spent getting your Carbine skill up. You'd still have an item system with in-depth crafting and stats, so that getting a better rifle or making a better rifle is worth it, but the important part of the combat is your ability to aim well.

Same goes for the melee combat.

I am a huge star wars nerd, too.

[samuelk]

I still don't get the problem with mine disking.

[Falhawk]

who said it was a problem

[jackrabbit]

Patton, your game idea is related on twitch, and as a young person, your skills are still honed to a razor's edge. Being as I'm 20 years older than you, I'd be initially clicking the mouse button 10-15 seconds after i was already dead, and I'm still 15 years younger than Ned and Budly.

I prefer the ability to be tactical and use strategy over the ability to be quick.

[Patton]

Well, depending on the gameplay and how you choose to play, it wouldn't necessarily need to be twitch. Maybe if you played a melee character you'd have to be quicker, but if you played an engineer / rifleman / sniper, you could plan your attacks better and use strategy in addition to your own ability to aim.

It's better than "hey i'm 2 feet away from this dude but i still missed with my blaster 9 times in a row."

When have you known me to love twitch games anyway? I play Raven Shield, Ghost Recon, Operation Flashpoint, ArmA, etc. Not UT and Quake.

[Tai]

But when you do play UT (or as I recall, BF2) you do quite well, yes?

[Orion]

He has honed his twitch skills should he ever face a cobra in a random store again.

(sorry, that's from irc, but its way funny. trust me)

[Tai]

He has honed his twitch skills should he ever face a cobra in a random store again.

(sorry, that's from irc, but its way funny. trust me)

I got it, and yes, twas funny :)

[Patton]

But when you do play UT (or as I recall, BF2) you do quite well, yes?


well i'm awesome at everything

so that explains it

[Sir Lucius]

I want an environment like oblivion, except maybe in the future or steam punk because I'm really just sick of elves. But a similar world, where you freely explore. And then make the combat and movement not clunky and suck. There would be a precision aiming system where you could toggle between normal mouselook, and moving the reticle as your cursor (think Freelancer without the edge scrolling.) In this way you could actually develop a melee system where you could aim, and attack a specific part of the body.

The reason you can't do this right now is because as an opponent gets closer the more clumsy your controls become. If someone is in your face then moving your entire head around to look at them is going to dizzy you -- in a situation like that you just aim with your eyes.

But I'd also let you initiate the attack from a distance. This way you could charge up on an enemy by targeting, locking on, and then rushing in. Since you wouldn't have to worry about the silly jousting that goes on in most FPS melee situation you could then focus on the actual combat. Using the precision targeting you could parry attacks, and using the wasd you could adjust your footing. The main focus would be to not make it a rapid click/dodge fest, but also not make attacks move stupidly slow.

It would also take a huge amount of effort to kill someone. Most victories would be decided by knocking the opponent down. I would like to change the penalty for death somehow.

[Shadowrat]

My perfect fps would be fun. I would love it. I would never get sick of it, and everyone would come to my house and we would play it all the time!

Also my wife would play it with me.

[FoeKilla]

my ideal FPS wouldn't try to bore me with photo-realism

[Budly]

Hell, I was past my prime when Tribes came out...

[Tai]

Hell, I was past my prime when Tribes came out...

I was in an "Over 25" tribe.

[Creole Ned]

I don't have an ideal FPS because the genre encompasses too many playstyles and I likes me some variety. I can come up with some things that would never go in my ideal FPS, though:

• unlockable items in multiplayer (BF2 - no soup [or fancy guns] for you!)
• monster closets (Hello Doom 3, 1994 just called and wants its level design back)
• lousy vehicles (Your brickmobile has arrived [Tribes 2])
• corridor-room-corridor cut 'n paste design (Hello Halo)
• brown (Quake)

[Q]

Another thing would not go in an ideal FPS:

An end game event where you have to remember random sequences of numbers to defuse a bomb. Add in restrictions such as not having enough time to write the numbers down and that the sequence is different every time you try the event. (Red Faction)

[Postal]

You guys should just buy a game engine and rewrite tribes 1 with better graphics. It would probably sell.

[Shadowrat]

That would require work.

Unless.......

public class Game : FPS
{
public void UpdateFrame(int msecElapsed)
{
if(!fun)
{
fun = true;
}
}
}

[Sir Lucius]

You forgot to declare fun.

[Shadowrat]

It's in the base FPS class. Most implementations leave it at it's default value of false.

[Falhawk]

what was the brick mobile in T2? I found most of the vehicles to be pretty handy overall.

[Creole Ned]

All three ground vehicles. The physics were terrible. In fact, the tank originally had wheels but they turned it into a "hovertank" because they couldn't get it to work right. I'm not commenting on the utility of the vehicles, just the way they felt and handled.

And Postal, someone tried the "Tribes 1 with better graphics" thing. It was called Legends, it was free and it faded into obscurity pretty damn fast.

[Creole Ned]

Now, to not be a completely Negative Nellie, here are some of my fancy hopes and dreams for various types of first person shooters.

A few that are obvious and would apply to all:

- a consistent and distinctive visual style. A good example of this would be Half-Life 2 or TRON 2.0. There is no mistaking what world you are in with these games. A bad example would be the original Quake. Sure it was 3D, but it was a dull, colorless environment, with all of the levels starting to look the same after awhile. I don't care if the look is highly stylized or attempts photo-realism, so long as it pulls off said style.

- meaningful multiplayer or no multiplayer at all. By this, I mean make the multiplayer a well-rounded component of the game or skip it altogether. Why did they patch multiplayer into Deus Ex? I have no idea. On the other hand, Quake 2's MP was simple but buckets o' gibby fun after you finished the single player campaign.

- a good ending. Nearly every story-driven FPS has a crappy ending. See Q's note on Red Faction as one example. Sometimes it makes sense to square off against TBBG (The Big Bad Guy). In Jedi Knight, you knew the game was leading Kyle Katarn to an eventual confrontation with the dark Jedi Jerec and it worked. In Unreal you face off against some Queen Alien. Why? I dunno. Because she's in the room before the rocketship that gets you off the planet, I guess.

- minimize loading screens. Loading screens disrupt flow and pull you from the story. Keep them brief or find some fancy way to stream levels without bogging the game down.

For specific types of FPSes (brainless shooter vs. tactical sim vs. story-driven, etc.) I'll have to do more thinkin'.

[jackrabbit]

in the upcoming racing game DiRT, the loading screen animates through several of your stats like your top speed, miles traveled, favorite car, best lap time, and all sorts of cool personalized facts. I found myself almost disappointed nearly every time the load ended. I think something like that would be great. Static load screens are a hallmark of 1990 and we really need to do away with them.

[Shadowrat]

I'd also like to add:

Publish the game digitally. I don't want to go and buy a cd or dvd. I'm not saying don't sell cds and dvds, just make sure that i can get it online.

Also, because the game has such great coop multiplayer, let me distribute it all over my LAN.