Last Friday, I was practicing on an indoor range with my pistol trying to prepare for a shooting competition on the 18th of this month. As I went through over 200 rounds I realized how much just a little bit of stress or tension while I'm shooting can really impact accuracy, and I also thought about how in most FPS games, even the "tactical" ones, the characters have total pinpoint accuracy with their pistols.

Basically, if I'm shooting with a time limit at a target like this ( http://images.outdoorinteractive.net/mgen/280009_d.jpg ) at a distance of 10 or 15 yards, if I shoot well all the rounds will be within the 2 inner rings, but if I happen to flinch or follow up poorly with my shot, I might hit someplace in the 9 ring. Occasionally if I really screw up, like if I accidentally fire before my sights are properly aligned, I might hit some place in the 7 ring.

But in a FPS video game if you have a character using a pistol to shoot a target at 10 to 15 yards with 3 seconds to aim between each shot, you know that each and every round is going to be exactly impacting the dead center of the target. There usually wouldn't even be a grouping, but just one impact point.

When I think about it this would really change the way a "realistic" FPS might play, if the characters are either a whole lot more or a whole lot less accurate. I feel like if characters were a lot less accurate there would probably be more of a role for suppressive fire, since it would be harder to tell if you're being directly fired on, or if you area is being suppressed, and at the same time suppressive fire wouldn't be dramatically less dangerous than direct fire. I also figure that machine guns for saturation fire would be more effective, and "sniper rifles" would probably get more dangerous.

Call of Duty 4 is probably the closest to what you're describing, from all the games I've played. Now, with 3 seconds to aim at a stationary target, you're still going to be dead accurate, but if you want remotely accurate shots you do have to aim down the sights, and even aiming it's hard to hit a moving target at range. Pistols are innacurate as hell if you want to fire more than once in a short span of time. Suppressive fire from LMGs is actually threatening, since 2 - 3 bullets will kill you (and since you can supress people through most walls), and sniper rifles are required for guaranteed accuracy at long range.

It's still not entirely realistic; with the exception of slight weapon sway, the first (aimed) bullet is always deadly accurate out to any range, even from pistols (though all weapons do slightly less damage at their long range), but over all I'd say it's a decent simulation of a combat situation involving seasoned professionals.

To be honest, a 'realistic' FPS probably wouldn't be very fun.

That's not entirely true. In some games, the guns will have an accuracy score. Instead of always hitting the same spot, the bullets will hit a random place in a circle which radius will depend on this score. Also in some games the aim will change after shooting, because of the recoil. It's not exactly an alignment/stress problem but most FPS consider that the character is a competent firearm user.

Some games also enforce inaccuracy. Recently, Crysis does so in harder difficulty levels: even if your sight is on target you're likely to miss at long range. This force the player to get close to the action, which is much funnier, but it also feels strange and give you the impression that your guns suddenly become inefficient past some range.



Operation Flashpoint and UT's Infiltration mod were made to be as realistic as possible (except for some aspects, such as healing in OFP) and were fun too.

i don't know what you're talking about . . in FarCry/CrySis and Project IGN or whatevr that one was called i was never able to hit anything with the damn pistols . . especially not as soon as the silencers were attached . . and follow up shots get gradually worse since unreal one, as the enforcer had a mighty kick if i remember correctly O.o

Oh yeah? I might have to finally try FarCry, then. I understand it's supposed to be set in the Federated States of Micronesia? That would be ironic because I actually lived there for 2 years and I'd probably be chuckling at everything that's "wrong" with the environment.

My suggestion would be to go play Firewarrior, realize that the reason the standard Imperial Guard trooper sucks so badly is because he can't hit the broadside of a Landraider with the crappy accuracy of his lasrifle (or just about any other weapon in that game aside from the autogun), and decide whether or not you find that "fun".

Personally, I stopped playing the damn thing when I found that to hit anything with the bolters I had to jam the end of the barrel into the opponents navel.

But to be fair the way you're describing it that would be an extreme. Whereas I'm talking about someone having, say, a median level of accuracy for, say, an ordinary US Army soldier.

STALKER was awesome for that. You couldn't hit shit in that game with the pistol. You'd basically wait for a bad guy to come into your iron sights and unload a clip. You wouldn't see shit while you were firing because of the muzzle flash. So you'd unload, stop, look what had happened, and either be lucky and the guy was on the floor or you'd have missed so you had to try again. It was great.

Fallout 3 . . it's actually BOTH extremes at once . . if you're NOT using VATS, the weapons tend to not even hit things the size of a house propperly . . as soon as you DO actually use VATS with some Skill, you're pretty much guaranteed to head shot most things . .

Far cry 2 has an accurate degree of firearms inaccuracy. Downside, your in a fucking jungle, you can hardly see what your shooting at, and it is basically super annoying.

FPS games want railgun style weapons because it gives the user the most satisfying game experince - unlike far cry 2 where you can line up a guys head with iron sights when he has no idea you are there.. and then miss because the RNG said you do.

Fundamentally it comes down to control: In real life you have control and its your fault, in the game the RNG basically says ' you miss wildly' or 'you WIN TEH GAME'

The way I see it, the best way to have a fully immersive experience is to use projectile weapons with realistic physics. Bullets should drop due to gravity, and they should be pushed by the wind, but other than that they should travel straight and rapid fire accuracy should be damaged by barrel movement due to recoil.

This way, it isn't perfrect but it isn't random, either.

probably next generation of games that will have this kind of physical exactness.
this generation is pretty close allready, only the bullets don't drop, everything else does in most games . . arrows, bolts, rockets, missles, grenades . . thrown rocks, sawblades, human bodies . . everyting you shoot from the rock it launcher in F³ does

I'd say the justification for the superhuman accuracy of a game is that in real life, your accuracy depends upon your skill, time spent aiming, and hand-eye coordination (and the gun does the rest, since most firearms are more accurate than the people shooting them). In a game, they want the same criteria, only they get it from you the player. You still need a decent reaction time, need to line everything up properly (mouse on target), need to squeeze the trigger (hit the button), etc, etc, etc...and then the computer does the rest.

Making the firearms themselves less accurate makes the skill of the wielder less important, and folks tend to not like that. There's been a few shooters that modify your accuracy over time (the Ghost Recon games let you improve your accuracy, the Vampire: Bloodlines RPG had a FPS interface but unless your Firearms skill was high your shots were pretty wild, etc)...but for the most part they want player skill to determine accuracy, so that the player's involved in the game.

Counterstrike is still popular right?

That has some accuracy variablity to it plus plenty of muzzle flash, and recoil. Especially recoil.

Actually they tweaked those values every update. I remember when they added the Mac10 and me and some other guy unloaded clips into each other at maybe 30 meters. Despite lining up the crosshairs neither did any appreciable damage to the other.

There was also something called, ummmm, action half life? I think. Anyway I remember in order to be accurate it took into account what you were doing. So optimally you'd be still and squatting.

It was always hilarous to see someone who was new trying to do the tradition shoot while leaping thing. Being in their crosshairs was probably the safest place in the room.

Counterstrike weapons are highly accurate - assume you stand still/crouch. Watch the top players - they rarely miss, and they support what I'm talking about. I think Critias has hit it on the head.

Operation Flashpoint definitely had bullet drop, but no wind.

Supposedly Red Orchestra has bullet drop and ricochets. Actually it must have realistic ricochets because you can see that aspect of the ballistics engine when you fire a machine gun with tracers.

Like I said they've been tweaking those values off and on with releases. I remember a time when you could snipe with the P90 (only one round at a time but still), and I remember when if you lined up with a wall and fired the odds of the bullet hitting where the cross hairs were was pretty bad.

Sounds like maybe people decided they want less "realism" in that sense.

I can see that because it's a game of skill and adding pure luck could be seen as a little off. I.e. whether you win or not isn't just based on your talents but where that round actually hit. More realistic, but maybe not more fun.

I kinda like the idea of bullet drop and wind or somesuch. Things where a skilled marksman could still put any round on target but it requires more skill to do so.

Exactly, luck is the anthema of skill, and yeah, CS does ahve the RNG boning you on recoil, but that just makes single shot SA type fire the name of the game.

Again, watch the CPL level guys. Never miss. The guns are like railguns, that said they never spray and never use like the para, but thats why.

I don't think even moderate players use the Para. Well. Actually if I knew some spots where the enemy was camping on the other side of a wall it is sometimes fun to just spray the room through the wall sowing confusion as your allies move in.

The rare kill is ever so fun.


On not spraying did they add a better weapon for really close in work? Or do they just not get into that? It used to be the P90 on full was great for that i.e. leaping into a tunnel with the trigger down. You're throwing out enough ammo all over that you'll tend to stun nearby enemies and take them down even if they were sitting there camping the spot.

iirc, the delta force series from novalogic had gravity drop, but im not so sure about wind.

very fun games to play to, given that they used a voxel engine to really give you big maps to run around in.

Yeah, I did enjoy that. You could also sight in your scope for various distances. Unfortunately, in Delta Force: Black Hawk Down none of the maps were large enough to ever require you to do that, and it was only in some fan-made maps where I was able to have the fun of compensating for bullet drop with bolt action sniper rifles.

Good players just clock you in the head with their rifles when you try that shit. See how current pros are playing: http://www.gotfrag.com/css/demos/

Games like Rainbow Six Vegas simulate the human error in long-distance shooting by having the target reticule automatically move around ever so slightly. So while point-blank shooting would be unaffected, attempting to head-shot someone from a distance with a pistol or full-auto SMG is nearly impossible.

I remember playing Metal Gear Solid years ago and being impressed with the sniper mechanics. Snake carried pills that slowed his breathing and heartbeat which allowed for a steadier shot.

I find the ability to soak up bullets more unrealistic than FPS gunplay but I also know that one-hit-and-your-out mechanics makes for a frustrating game.

The Sniper-Part in FarCry was really supreme . . or was that hitman?
crouching made the crosshair move less, laying down prone made it nearly stop, aside from your breathing . . holding down one button meant you held your breath to nearly bring the crosshair to a stand still, and it still moved ever so slightly . . and if you held your air for too long, it was useless because with taking damage it moved again . . it made sniping damn hard and near impossible in vertain situations, but it actually worked out fine i think . . you have to hold down right mouse to zoom in, you have to hold down some key on the keyboard to hold your breath, you have to keep the mouse moving to compensate for the little bit of remaining cross-hair-movement and you had to find a nice spot to snipe from first! . . of course, this became kinda moot after you discovered in FarCry, that you could snipe with the frigging rocket launcher and only had to do the sniping untill the rocket left the launcher . . after that, just carefully let go of the mouse, as the rocket follows the crosshair of the launcher *g*

You suckers wanting a realistic game should all go play insurgency - a free mod for any source engine game.

Features:

A) All the weapons do Xtreme damage

B) All the weapons are super inaccurate unless you are crouched or prone and not moving, but when you are braced, over game ranges (typically 100m or less) you've got a railgun.

C) Actually has supression effects from weapons

Its also really hard to work out where people are shooting at you from and its one of the most frustrating games I've ever played. Camping it up with an LMG and slaughtering the idiotsas they come through a choke is fun though.

Sorry, I can't download anything with the word "Xtreme" in the first line of its list of virtues.

I haven't played Insurgency, but the Infiltration (don't worry, it's just the name, it's not another sneaking FPS) mod for UT99 was made with realism in mind. The weapons were as close as possible to real life (the main developer was a gun nut and asked the manufacturers when he didn't know something), it had bullet drop (no wind, though), breathing control. It also had something I've yet to see in another realistic FPS: realistic movement physics (Operation Flashpoint had something a bit similar but not as good). I don't really know how to describe it, it had to do with inertia, sprinting, head bobbing... but it felt great.

But you still played a professional soldier: your sights were always aligned correctly when in aiming mode. The only game I can see where it wasn't the case is Trespasser, where you controlled (or rather tried to control) the hand instead of the gun (or whatever was in your hand). Hopefully the dinos were slow and retarded...

You know what, though? I loved Infiltration (sadly by the time I installed it there were no more games being played online, which IMO is ridiculous because it's the best multiplayer FPS ever) but your character was still EXTREMELY accurate compared to me. I remember taking my Infiltration character to the range map and shooting at targets really far away with pistols and hitting dead on. The Infiltration character is a lot more accurate than I am personally with a pistol, and that's with me having recently practiced a bit for the pistols competition I'd mentioned in another thread. In Infiltration as far as accuracy goes you're the absolute cream of the crop.

Las time I played (which was a year or two ago) there were still some German players playing in the German evening time on one or two servers. Great guys, far above what I've witnessed in other online games.

Back on topic, as I said in my post, the only FPS game I can think of where you had to align your sights yourself is Trespasser but it was really hard to control the hand correctly (even harder than mastering the sword in Die by The Sword).

I was actually just thinking, ironically, nearly the opposite thing. Certainly FPS 'characters' do tend to be crazy accurate at short range firefights, but I find that in most cases it is simply impossible to hit anyone, no matter what you do, outside of 50 meters or so, relative, game distance short of a scoped sniper rifle... at which point you finally get to somethign approaching realistic assault rifle ranges.

Obviously this will vary wildly by game....

Still, my expirences with shooting games is that 50m or so is the outside of your normal engagement envelope. And my expirences with guns tells me that its stupidly easy to hit 50m with a rifle of almost any sort, even under stress. Obviously I haven't been pursued by rabid dinosaurs, hordes of zombies or whatever else they're plugging into games these days.

My last bit of anecdotal whatnot is my time playing Rainbow Six, where you could be crouched down with an assault rifle five feet from a standing terrorist in a doorway, miss with an entire clip and be killed by a single shot from the RUNNING badguy.

Superhumanly accurate? The NPC's, certainly. The Characters? Less so.


Also: I only played Counterstrike once, I quit when my opponent (we were LANning it) kept dodging bullets and headshotting me by leaping around corners like a meth addicted bunny rabbit... with a Desert Eagle .50.

be glad you never experienced that with him using that pesky bolt action sniper rifle...

i have long since given up on most kinds of FPS games for this reason, people dont go for tactics, they go for reflexes...

and games end up feeding that, to the point where if you head for cover rather then go hot shots 2, you loose...

only thing worse than that is being knifed while using things like HMG's, Miniguns and other such things . .
i generally don't like the realistic FPS games either. i love things like AvP2. there's a self aiming MG in there!
and most combat against anything else than humans tends to be close combat anyway . .

Call of Cthullhu: Dark Corners of the Earth had about the most realistic shooting (and thus most annoying) I've seen. Besides the fact that their is no interface, no targeting reticule at all, meant that you actually had to line up shots with your gun, and your characters injuries affected his ability to hit anything unless you had that weird alien lightning gun. Going insane was fun too.

You should check it out. I just rented the game, and found it fun but far harder than anything I've played before or since. Including Halo 3, Halflife2, Fallout 3, and Deadspace.

EDIT I've also heard some good things about the new American Army propaganda game, it has realistic body armor that begins to wear out after the first hit and actual weapon physics. What was it called again...

EDIT2: Duh... its called America's Army.