Wow thanks guys!

Amazing responses from all of you, helped a great deal, much more than the websites that i researched (all though they did help also). :)

Lots of ideas to take into account, very pleased :).

"For twenty different people, you'll get twenty different answers, depending upon their view of 'good', and their personal likes/dislikes"

I agree with that but its kind of what i was looking for, to see if maybe somewhere the oppionons can be merged together in some way.

Thanks again for all of your replys.

Quote:Original post by LmT
Good physics is a must. Also, strategy and immersion makes great FPS games. If it's multiplayer, then it needs a variety of game types and a focus on teamwork. Balance will also be needed. Random recoil like Counter Strike really takes away from the game (it's never fun to miss when you're standing still and have the sniper crosshairs on their face).

If good physics is a must, then UT is a bad FPS. Most of the game playing world would disagree with you there. Actually most FPS games would be bad.

A focus on teamwork? What about deathmatch games? Oh, sorry, I forgot - UT is dreadful.

Be aware of what is highly opinionated, and what is good sense.

For a good first-person shooter, there actually needs to be very little character development regarding the player-character. If the game is told in first person, then it's strongly suggested that the player is supposed to feel as if they were that character, and if that character is a strongly developed individual, it tends to shatter that illusion of being the character. Bioshock did a wonderful job of this. Not only do you never see the character's face (brilliant in terms if projection) but the character is also a hollow shell for the player to inhabit. Creating the sense of becoming this character at the bottom of the Atlantic. Ironically enough, one of the biggest offenders of this is the Duke Nukem character. His personality is so strong, it becomes nearly impossible for the player to immerse themselves into his role (which is what any first-person game should strive to achieve) because he is so clearly defined. Albeit, this can be forgiven a little since the games were early shooters and can be deemed pioneers of the genre, but still, a flaw nonetheless.

For shooters in general, a good flowing pace never hurts. It is actually detrimental to have the game be a nonstop onslaught of the most intense situations. By doing this, it essentially oversaturates the game and removes any impact these moments may have had. Instead, there should be a few moments of increased action and tension with areas of reduced conflict between. If Halo's pace was entirely like it's last level, the game would've been boring. It isn't necessarily high tension and quick pace which makes a game exciting, it's changing the pace.

And this is just a personal thing from me, but I really don't like it when there's boatloads of guns in a shooter. By having too many weapons, each weapons importance diminishes. Some games (such as Perfect Dark) include so many weapons that it gets to the point where many of them are just useless. If an item is useless, why should memory be spent on it?

I've said this before in another post, but avoid cliches like the plague. If there's anything to avoid in any game, it's a cliche (Gears of War, I'm looking at you). Of course, some shooters make fun of cliches and do it successfully (Contra, Duke Nukem) but many cliches are used poorly and end up making most of the game unintentionally comedic. Just be aware of the characters you're putting in, that is the greatest defense against falling into cliches.

A "good" FPS is so because it has solid shooting and shooting mechanics. You can get away with atrocious level design, lack of originality, boring graphics, and bad AI if you just have shooting action that feels good.

Someone mentioned Halo above--that's the perfect example. Nothing about Halo particularly excels over other games of the genre (not that none of the other elements are decent, because they are), but shooting things in Halo is just plain fun, which makes it a good (but not great) FPS. And a good FPS on the console platform was so rare at the time it first came out that it took the gaming world by storm, just like Goldeneye before it.

So in my opinion--and I think it's correct--the gunplay is where FPS design should always begin. It's a visceral thing and it's hard to get right, but if you do it, you'll reap the rewards. And if you do it really, really well, like Gears of War, the gunplay alone can turn your game into something magnificent.

Now, most truly great FPS games will have solid shooting and will do something else--or more than one other thing--really well. For the Half-Life series, it was immersion. For the Unreal Tournament series, it's fast-paced multiplayer. For Deus Ex, it was open-ended gameplay and interactive storytelling.

But despite their wildly different gameplay (within the genre), all of those games have one thing in common: Viscerally satisfying shooting action.

As someone else said, all the really good FPS's have the basic simple controls. WASD to move, SPACE to jump, mouse click to shoot.

As someone said, realism in FPS's is bad. It's not fun.

There are 4 basic types of FPS from my experiences. Fast-paced mostly free-for-all as in Quake/UT, tactical team-play as in Counter-Strike, even more tactical and objective-based as in Battlefield, and story-based as in Half-Life.

They all have some of the same things going for them. Simple controls, easy to learn, hard to master, but very fun at any level of ability or coordination.

To me it’s all about balance. Give everyone (even the enemy) a chance to actually win. Even if I only had a knife, give me something that I can use it to win, like cutting a rope to spring a trap.

Of course, simple controls are a plus (or a must???). Try to keep the players hand on the same place as much as possible. Having too many buttons is just confusing and will break the game play.

Quote:Original post by OremLK
Viscerally satisfying shooting action.

Well said. I completely agree.

There are a huge variety of different things which can make a game more fun, from atmosphere to strategy, to story, etc... but to make a game fun in the first place, it needs good shooting.

Gamasutra had an article recently, actually, on a similar subject. When you are playing a game, regardless of what other cool features you include, the low level activity that you will repeat endlessly throughout the game must be fun, and the more polished it is, the better the impression of your game.


As to realism being bad... I think thats a vast over-simplification. Realism is often an excuse to introduce something that is a bad design, but it is not innately a bad thing. If it were, everybody would unanimously agree that they would rather be playing Wolfenstein 3D than UT/Counterstrike/Halo/whatever, because those latter games are all more realistic in terms of graphics, sound, movement, physics, and most other facets of gameplay.

I'd agree with Telastyn, storylines in FPSes are bad. Well its not that they are bad its just that they are done badly.

Cutscenes are one reason. First person shooters are the nearest game type to making you actually feel in the game. They go against the ethos of FPSs.

In Alien vs Predator 2 they have lots of cutscenes which just serve to jolt you out of the game and annoy. As in one scene the character you play causes the most frustrating level where you have to go into an alien infested den to rescue someone who only dies right in front of you. I can only think they did that to make you feel heroic or something, instead it just makes you feel you are playing a stupid character and grates because you have absolutely no say in the matter.

Thats another matter overtly forcing you to do things. As in the Half life 2s and episodes. The NPCs get you to do all matter of things. They try and pander to you by saying how elite you are, which just makes me feel like a pleb, and wondering if they arent laughing behind my back saying "Freemans such an idiot we can get him to do anything".

Quote:Original post by caffiene

Quote:Original post by OremLK
Viscerally satisfying shooting action.

Well said. I completely agree.

There are a huge variety of different things which can make a game more fun, from atmosphere to strategy, to story, etc... but to make a game fun in the first place, it needs good shooting.

Gamasutra had an article recently, actually, on a similar subject. When you are playing a game, regardless of what other cool features you include, the low level activity that you will repeat endlessly throughout the game must be fun, and the more polished it is, the better the impression of your game.


As to realism being bad... I think thats a vast over-simplification. Realism is often an excuse to introduce something that is a bad design, but it is not innately a bad thing. If it were, everybody would unanimously agree that they would rather be playing Wolfenstein 3D than UT/Counterstrike/Halo/whatever, because those latter games are all more realistic in terms of graphics, sound, movement, physics, and most other facets of gameplay.

Great article, it really touched one something that I've been both subconsciously and (occasionally) consciously considering lately--That is, the repetition inherent in games and how important it is that the repeated gameplay be really, really good, since it has to be performed perpetually. Any boredom or unsatisfying or irritating aspect is going to amplified exponentially the longer the game goes on.

Most recently, I noticed this a lot in Mass Effect. It's an amazing game, but driving around in the Mako (a land rover/tank) was painful, and shooting things with it wasn't much fun either. In a game that took me 30 hours to finish, with at least a quarter of that taking place in the Mako, it put a serious dent in my enjoyment by the end.