RPGs that are unanimously praised by people of refined taste that you never could finish.

[Damned Registrations]

How is that a failure of an abstraction? Last I checked human beings don't flawlessly point guns wherever they want. Aiming is a fucking skill. Go play a game of darts and tell me how inaccuracy is unrealistic.

You could do something more abstract with less aiming (like really heavy autoaim or outright locking onto targets- and then applying the miss chance/inaccuracy wavering) but it works out to the same effect pretty much. I suppose it might be better to assuage the butthurt FPS players have at not being able to l33t360nOsC0pE their way to victory with a file clerk specialized in engineering and negotiations who has never held a gun before.

 

[Roguey]

How is that a failure of an abstraction? Last I checked human beings don't flawlessly point guns wherever they want. Aiming is a fucking skill. Go play a game of darts and tell me how inaccuracy is unrealistic.

You could do something more abstract with less aiming (like really heavy autoaim or outright locking onto targets- and then applying the miss chance/inaccuracy wavering) but it works out to the same effect pretty much. I suppose it might be better to assuage the butthurt FPS players have at not being able to l33t360nOsC0pE their way to victory with a file clerk specialized in engineering and negotiations who has never held a gun before.

Most games aren't trying to be realistic. Especially the likes of Deus Ex, Bloodlines, and Alpha Protocol. So why should "realistic aiming" be a goal? What does it add other than "Well, I have to wait a second or more before I get an accurate shot"? It doesn't make it more intelligent, it doesn't make it more challenging. It's just some weird bullshit some misguided devs put in because they're in denial over the fact that they're making a shooter (or because they were forced by a dumb publisher as in the case of AP).

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

What does it add other than "Well, I have to wait a second or more before I get an accurate shot"? It doesn't make it more intelligent, it doesn't make it more challenging.

Having to wait should make it more challenging, the combat being real time. Then again I don't play those games so I wouldn't really know.

 

[Average Manatee]

So...reflex based aim in first person shooter with zero-in timer based on stats in real time is the same as a game where you just hover a mouse cursor over a target, see the chance of hitting and click to spend AP + roll die?
I really don't see the similarity.

In both cases you use interface to specify the action and let the character skill determine outcome.
Both are pretty good abstractions of how this kind of stuff works (with FPS aiming being less abstract and more detailed one).
And finally, both can make people butthurt for completely stupid reasons.

It's a failure of an abstraction because the game is already expecting you to use your reflexes to aim in their general direction and then undermining it. Plus waiting seconds for a reticule to close has never been enjoyable, ever. That is not a thing to be enjoyed, merely tolerated if there are other worthwhile aspects.

Fortunately non-autistic game developers like Josh Sawyer know better.

No, fuck off.

 

[RK47]

Finished that Hell's Kitchen warehouse mission....I forgot about that Jojo and Smuggler sidequest Is it possible to backtrack?

 

[glasnost]

Finished that Hell's Kitchen warehouse mission....I forgot about that Jojo and Smuggler sidequest Is it possible to backtrack?

If you haven't yet flown back to UNATCO you can always grenade-climb your way up one of the fire escapes to return to Hell's Kitchen proper from the warehouse district.

I intentionally did everything out of order in my last playthrough, saving the ambrosia crate for last (alex cheekily informed me anna had already taken care of it upon my arrival at the crate's location).

 

[RK47]

is there anyway to expand inventory space?

 

[glasnost]

No.

I seem to recall that once I had a GEP gun with a vial of zyme in the lower left corner of its inventory footprint, but whether that was a genuine glitch or a false memory I couldn't say. I've never been able to reproduce it.

 

[RK47]

hahaha ok. I think I understood why i hate this game when I first played it.
I wanted everything perfect. I don't wanna mess up a shot and trigger alarms. I don't want to miss out on side missions and hidden goodies. I wanted JC to be the super agent, unstoppable, undetectable.

Turns out everything is more fun if I just go with the flow and not annoy myself over trivial stuff.
Trigger alert? Shoot it out. Can't pick the lock, blow it up. If I don't obsess over these small details, the game ends up pretty ok sort of fun.

 

[sser]

Except all those people that have been playing Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, and Team Fortress for more than a decade straight.

 

[RK47]

I think it wasn't randomized accuracy I'm angry about. I understand engine limitation when they try to add 'gun recoil' as a factor to wielding a gun. But how feasible it is for a trained agent to take soooo long just to steady a light pistol against a dude standing still, with his back turned?

I don't want to be too anal about this, but I think what roguey said is right, it wasn't a good feature, it was merely tolerated.
And I still stand by my statement: making shooters more RPGamey by gun-steadying affected by stats is the wrong way of doing it.
I live with random accuracy - called 'recoil' in battlefield 3; it costs me a few battles, but in general this happens AFTER I press the trigger /while jumping and running - not when I take aim from a static position.

 

[SCO]

You're basically complaining about the game simulating something from real life. You can be a top olympic shooter, but your arms will still move when your heart beats (and much more if you've been moving previously) - why do you think those skier/shooting competition dude(ette)s take so long to focus when they get to the targets in the winter Olympics?

Game is not a shooter, deal with it (or invest in the skill and lose those delicious other skills)

BTW you always start at 'trained' in handguns even if you sell the skill, so that's a way to cheat a bit at the start.

 

[Spockrock]

How is that a failure of an abstraction? Last I checked human beings don't flawlessly point guns wherever they want. Aiming is a fucking skill

yeah, and a special agent with years of training can't hit a barn door with his gun because he's (abstraction) a level 1.

HRT/SAD guys spend most of their time at the shooting range/kill house, they fire hundreds of thousands of rounds every year. that's to make sure they can fire from any position without even aiming.

and then they find themselves as characters in an RPG and suddenly they can't shoot straight anymore

 

[Average Manatee]

Real life accuracy is no where near as good as games would have you believe. Statistically the US fires 250k bullets for every kill in Iraq (yes the majority of these are actually used in training, but its the best number we have available). Yet people want to be able to make every shot a headshot. Sorry, that doesn't happen. The accuracy in DX is not unreasonable. If anything is unreasonable it's that JC starts out as untrained, when he should start out at least at trained in all skills.

 

[Infinitron]

Real life accuracy is no where near as good as games would have you believe. Statistically the US fires 250k bullets for every kill in Iraq (yes the majority of these are actually used in training, but its the best number we have available). Yet people want to be able to make every shot a headshot. Sorry, that doesn't happen. The accuracy in DX is not unreasonable. If anything is unreasonable it's that JC starts out as untrained, when he should start out at least at trained in all skills.

This isn't about accuracy. It's about having to wait for seconds to see a crosshair shrink on your screen. That ain't fun. They should have made the firing-from-the-hip accuracy slightly better, kept the "accuracy improves if you wait" mechanic but made it hidden.

 

[LoPan]

Who plays a game hoping for a simulation of real life?

Who here has been in a firefight, is it just like in Deus Ex?

 

[Ulminati]

Who plays a game hoping for a simulation of real life?

Who here has been in a firefight, is it just like in Deus Ex?

Medkits take a bit longer to kick in

 

[Average Manatee]

This isn't about accuracy.

They should have made you more accurate.

lolwut?

kept the "accuracy improves if you wait" mechanic but made it hidden

This is one of the dumbest ideas ever. It would be like completely hiding your chance to hit in Fallout.

 

[LoPan]

Fallout is not first person.

 

[Infinitron]

Fallout - tactical view, you command another person, you tell him to use his skills, you need an indication of those skills.

Deus Ex - first person, you control yourself, you're aiming, player skill.

This isn't about accuracy.

They should have made you more accurate.

lolwut?

You think those two things are contradictory, but they aren't. Accuracy needs to be improved only so the need for waiting is lessened.

It should be "fairly accurate if I fire immediately, totally accurate if I wait", not "can't hit a barn if I fire immediately, fairly accurate if I wait".

 

[LoPan]

To make it hidden makes a lot more sense to the FPS interaction since it would make the player develop a 'feel'. Accuracy in an FPS game seems to have the same consequences in every game, even in a non-shooty-shoot like Morrowind the point of accuracy is to eliminate its negative effects and make it so you actually hit when you press the mouse button after aligning the cursor in three dimensional space. It is a very unimaginative, and heavy-handed use of RPG mechanics which detracts from the inherent immersion of the FPS perspective.

I'm trying to think of any benefits of accuracy in First Person, but I'm coming up short. Can the supporters come up with any besides faux-realism?

 

[Infinitron]

I'm trying to think of any benefits of accuracy in First Person, but I'm coming up short. Can the supporters come up with any besides faux-realism?

I think accuracy does belong in first person games, but only in a very limited, "physical simulation" sense, not the traditional RPG "to-hit roll" numerical stat-based sense.

 

[RK47]

I'm not clear by what you mean of accuracy? If you mean hiding the reticule zero-in? I'm all for it! That's why I'm so very glad for the laser dot. My mind is no longer dwelling on that damnable zeroing of reticule.

 

[Infinitron]

Something I remember doing in DX was playing it proto-popamole on Realistic difficulty. I'd carry around crates to where enemies hanged around, put them down and duck behind them during firefights. It worked well.

 

[CorpseZeb]

This isn't about accuracy. It's about having to wait for seconds to see a crosshair shrink on your screen. That ain't fun. They should have made the firing-from-the-hip accuracy slightly better, kept the "accuracy improves if you wait" mechanic but made it hidden.

Well, but "realism" in the games is all about consistency. If there's a know mechanics (like "accuracy working that and that"), it's unreasonable (read: unpractical) to question it. Like in real life, there's no (practical) point to question Newton laws.