absis minas on 24/11/2003 at 19:16
yeah, you know...i haven't played the preview demo or anything.
nor do i plan to (all sorts of bad poo said about it).
but seeing that people get all pissed off when "accidentally" running out of ammo makes me think...since they wanted us to feel the "moral," "political," and "social" repercussions of our actions in the game - maybe the included that Universal Ammo as a sort of...Digital "after-the-fact" Spanking Paddle?
Fionavar on 24/11/2003 at 19:27
The only reason for universal ammo is to dummy down a game from a good SIM to a poor FPS, imo. This coupled with the fact that even leaning is out, seems to indicate the game is a poor PC cosole port ... or perhaps I am too jaded :D
Amorpheus on 24/11/2003 at 19:52
They made the decision for universal ammo for several reasons:
* It's simply much easier to balance the game if you don't have to scatter all different sorts of ammo throughout the maps. Especially for a non-linear one such as IW.
* To stop hoarding of certain types of ammo - that prevents blowing it all on one difficult situation, and saving it for a fight that never comes.
* To give the player more choice - you decide what to use when, based on ammo usage, weapon effect and personal preference.
Since every two-bit mindless (console-) shooter has different ammo types, consolification doesn't really hold up as reason...
Joben on 24/11/2003 at 19:52
Quote:
Originally posted by Fionavar The only reason for universal ammo is to dummy down a game from a good SIM to a poor FPS, imo.
well the problem with that argument is that every mindless FPS and it's sequel has individual ammo...
Fionavar on 24/11/2003 at 19:56
One of the realistic aspects - for me at least - with DX and SS, was that you had to manage your ammo. W/O that you get into mindless mayhem - which is one of the reasons I do not play a lot of FPS. Individual ammo makes gameplay more immersive and real, if you will. But hey what do I know, I refuse to buy a console after all :D
Gingerbread Man on 24/11/2003 at 20:28
Ammo management is a huge chunk of finding alternate play styles. Especially when things get tense. Think of SS2: Keeping track of how much ammo of particular types you have is a lot of what makes you so antsy.
"Okay, annelids up ahead. Organic thingies. But also a couple of droids around the corner where I will need to get to. So I have 6 armour-piercing rounds and 30 anti-personnel for the pistol, 10 regular shotgun loads and 16 anti-flesh. Thing is, I only have one maintenance tool, and the shotgun is nearly broken and the pistol isn't fairing much better... I'm going to have to load the shotgun with the flechette rounds, make every shot count, whip out the pistol with armour-piercing and hope I can cap the two droids with 6 shots. Assuming I do it right, I'll have to use the maintenance tool on the shotgun, put the pistol away until I can find another tool, and hope for the best. Ready? GO"
And that all happens while you're cowering behind a pillar.
Erm.
Not sure what that was supposed to illustrate, but I hope the idea behind it got through.
The CONCEPT (in-game concept) of a universal ammo pool is sound. Nanobots configuring ammo on the fly, fits with the worldview. The concept from a design POV seems a bit "a) it looks more realistic to not have accessible ammo and weapons lying around everywhere (cf Max Payne, where an entire city is heavily addicted to painkillers), and b) it's easier to build levels when we don't have to think about balancing weapon and ammo pickup locations" -- which seems to me half sensible and half lazy.
Also, I know nothing about the necessary considerations when designing for a console audience. I know that DX and UT and Max Payne etc sucked ass on the PS2, largely from an inventory management and control configuration POV, and since no one in their right mind wants to design two distinct versions of a game from the ground up for console and PC, there have to be compromises. Unfortunately, these compromises suck. I wonder if the current fascination with cross-platform releases will last very long... The genres are very different, and I know from countless arguments with my console-jockey friends that PC Gamers <s>think</s> know console games are dumb as mud and console gamers <s>think</s> know PC games are ridiculously complicated.
Ono rambling.
Back to ammo.
Remember all the times in all the games where ammo management and "saving up for a fight that never comes" was crucial to the solutions you came up with to obstacles the game threw at you. The times you jealously guarded your last few HE rounds and had to come up with some harebrained scheme to get past a spiderbot using the last drips of bioenergy for your radar cloak, your last LAM, and some exquisite timing. The times you waited for fifteen minutes, stuck up a tower, waiting for that perfect headshot, because you only had one sniper round left.
Never mind realism, ammo and other resource management is a core aspect of immersive gameplay and -- more importantly -- player resourcefulness. And as you develop resourcefulness, you automatically increase replay value.
Hear that? REPLAY VALUE. Magic words. Not that the people who should listen to me ever do, but I can dream.
Mehrunes on 24/11/2003 at 20:59
Quote:
Originally posted by Gingerbread Man Remember all the times in all the games where ammo management and "saving up for a fight that never comes" was crucial to the solutions you came up with to obstacles the game threw at you. The times you jealously guarded your last few HE rounds and had to come up with some harebrained scheme to get past a spiderbot using the last drips of bioenergy for your radar cloak, your last LAM, and some exquisite timing. The times you waited for fifteen minutes, stuck up a tower, waiting for that perfect headshot, because you only had one sniper round left.
Never happened to me. I became so preoccupied with saving up ammo that limited ammo types became non-options unless I had a full supply. I almost never used the 20mm HE rounds. By the time I would pick up a GEP gun I always had a full supply of rockets, which nullified just about every locked door or chest from that point on. Augs stayed
off until I had a good supply of biolectric cells. And throughout most of the game I had a full stock of both them and health packs. Ammo management pretty much just limited my choices to the stealth pistol or the sniper rifle, and turned the game's balance upside-down later on when I was a walking arsenal and assault bots, MiBs and anything that even dared to be locked was barely even a minor annoyance.
Epos Nix on 24/11/2003 at 21:56
Quote:
They made the decision for universal ammo for several reasons:No. They made the decision based on ONE reason: the Xbox controller has 10 buttons? Let's see: jump, crouch, fire, alt fire, 'use', start, select and 3 inventory screens... no room for reload there.
I can almost guarantee you that had there been no Xbox port, or had they not gone about porting the game to the Xbox in the fashion that they did, there would most certainly be multiple types of ammo and reloading. They are merely justifying the inclusion of unified ammo based on arbitrary reasons to save face and not admit that the Xbox was the higher priority platform.
Fionavar on 24/11/2003 at 22:09
Quote:
Originally posted by Epos Nix No. They made the decision based on ONE reason: the Xbox controller has 10 buttons? Let's see: jump, crouch, fire, alt fire, 'use', start, select and 3 inventory screens... no room for reload there.
I can almost guarantee you that had there been no Xbox port, or had they not gone about porting the game to the Xbox in the fashion that they did, there would most certainly be multiple types of ammo and reloading. They are merely justifying the inclusion of unified ammo based on arbitrary reasons to save face and not admit that the Xbox was the higher priority platform.
I'm gonna - as a cynic that is :D - have to agree. The rest is all coating to make the pill taste better ... btw GBM another great erudite break down ... :D
ZylonBane on 24/11/2003 at 23:25
Quote:
Originally posted by Epos Nix No. They made the decision based on ONE reason: the Xbox controller has 10 buttons? Let's see: jump, crouch, fire, alt fire, 'use', start, select and 3 inventory screens... no room for reload there.
Please be less confused. Unified ammo and reloading are two entirely different design decisions. Most FPSs have had shared ammo of some sort (even SS2), and many FPSs have eschewed reloading (Doom, Serious Sam, etc).
But now comes DX2 with every weapon using the exact same ammo, AND no reloads. And despite furious spin-mongering on ISA's part, I can only chalk this up to sheer bloodyminded laziness.
I don't particularly care how implausible it is that in the space of 20 years every single weapon from the last century has vanished from the face of the Earth and been replaced by nano-powered ones. And it's not much of a bother that ubiquitous nano-powered weapons must mean that nanites are now cheaper to fabricate than all other forms of ammunition, which makes them about as cheap as dirt, which means that everyone should have their own personal replicator. And it's only a minor distraction that these super-science weapons happen to look and act exactly like weapons powered by more traditional means. And I can scarcely be bothered to wonder how the clips of nano-ammo get from my backpack into my gun without any sort of visible loading.
No, what I don't like is that universal ammo means that once I run out of ammo for weapon A, I'm also out of ammo for weapons B, C, D, E, F, and G. The lack of reloads only makes this worse. When your character stops to pop in a new clip, that's a concrete reminder of how much ammo you're burning. But in DX2 it's easy to just hold down the trigger and piss away your entire ammo supply. The need to reload also adds a tactical element, forcing you to attack/retreat/etc.
I can understand what a mind-bending task it is to balance the ammo distribution in a game with dozens of maps and no way to predict what weapons the player will be using. But as GBM pointed out above, a big plus to specific ammo is that it forces you to think. So at the very least ISA should have implemented two or three basic classes of ammo, like ballistic/energy/biological, or whatever. This would have been orders of magnitude easier to playbalance and still retained some strategy in weapon use. Instead, they went with the dumbest, laziest possible course of action.
Eliminating specific ammo and reloads are, individually, rather dubious decisions. But together they're pure suck.
