So you've got into a firefight, after a conversation, and there's blood drips trailing after your not-quite-dead body as you haul yourself back into the shadows, fair enough, it was a tough battle but that final Flashbang you pulled was enough to overcome and defeat those two remaining terrorists. Walking down another corridor, you can hear some voices off to a room to the side, but what's this, in the middle of the corridor there's a +20 health pack. TadaHH!! There we have it, you're health is now almost back up to half way, that means with a bit of skill and a bit of luck you got enough cushion to go terrorist pushing once again......Edit:Apologies if I've preaching to the converted, so to speak, reading my post back I feel it comes across as a bit too , er, blunt, for my liking, but I'm absolutely not intending to disparage but more looking for iDGi to say "yes, we're on the same viewpoint" :-) Cheers.
And so it continues.
I find several related elements to this deeply atmosphere breaking for FPS games in general:
- - "finding" health packs just laying around like unwanted Chistmas presents. Does no one else ever use health packs?
- - Having health "packs" like sticking a plaster on a bullet wound is some sort of magical instant cure
- - Finding ammunition in the most unlikeliest of places, cupboards in abandoned schools on one FPS I played. Like WTF?
- -- Can FOOD regenerate your health, thus after a firefight you need to find a staff room in The Tower, or a kitchen area to find foodstuffs you can restock with.
- -- You can extend this with being able to "carry" some food and then only needing to find a microwave (any staff or communual area) to use to turn packet food into eadible food that can restore health and stamina etc.
- -- This would by and large replace the atmosphere breaking and extremely unrealistic genetic "health pack" style which really dates from 1980s games and does nothing for world submersion.
- -- Obviously, medical kits from some occassional first aide centres can be found and used for bigger benefits.
- -- But you get the idea. No "magic answers", people have to think about what they would do IN THE WORLD, not what they should do in the game, to find the things they need to survive and overcome.
- -- This doesn't mean hiding things, but simply that various usable items should be stored in a logical location rather than as so many generic FPS games leave them "laying around random rooms".
- -- Same with ammuition and weapons, some from dead bodies, yes of course, but others would mostly be from security checkpoints, not a bunch of RPG-heads just sitting on a sofa on level 15 Cold Calling Sales office in The Tower.
Cheers
M
Qualifier: Obviously there's a balance to draw, as some people will inevitably complain that it could be too difficult to have to clear the security checkpoint of guards before going on there and restocking on ammo and likewise I don't want to tell you what to put where exactly, but rather than as a concept of "well the player could be running out of bullets about this area, so we should drop them some bullets for them to pick up around here.... say in that room there, just because" to be more like, "where would you really be likely to find a box of bullets on floor 15 of the Tower?". It's a way of thinking about the WORLD rather than a way of thinking about the LEVEL.
P.s> Very pleased to read you got the Primary goal on Fig. :-)