Quote:Original post by Elhrrah
In order to add complexity and reduce redundancy, you can add things such as different damage types, or bullet effects, to create a series of weapon sets.

+ Reload complexity / speed
+ Weapon dexterity / weight
+ Ammo availability / ammo cost
+ Clip size / rounds per reload
+ Projectile type (in my game: frag, laser, plasma, pulse)
+ Projectile traveling speed
+ Projectile traveling Accuracy
+ Weapon aiming accuracy (sights, scopes)
+ Firing rate
+ Shot modes: single, burst, automatic
+ Firing recoil
+ Projectile damage (hurt targets)
+ Projectile force / power (knock targets around)
+ Projectile shock (stun targets)
+ Projectile critical-chance
+ Splash damage / area effect
+ Stealthiness

There are other concerns, such as buying price and storage size (or where you can holster it). As you can see, it wouldn't be that challenging to come up with 40 diverse weapons.

Don't forget balance issues. 40 distinct and interesting guns, 36 of which are specialized for tasks that the player almost never has to complete, boils down to four "good" guns and a library of "try once, then discard" guns.

Army of Two had a large number of guns, and there were a neat set of attributes for each, including their flashiness, which impacted enemy aggression (a central element in the combat in that game). But even if you tried really hard to enjoy your favorite gun, spending money to optimize it and carrying it all the time, you'd often find that some other gun beats it in every possible scenario.

Likewise, Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 had a huge arsenal, but you only ever see a half-dozen or so represented in multiplayer, since those guns are most advantageous.

Personally, I don't really get the 'lots of guns!' mentality. A pistol is a pistol, a sub-machine gun is a sub-machine gun, and a sniper rifle is a sniper rifle. Sure you can dress them up differently, and have them function in slightly different ways, but at the end of the day, there's never enough distinction between them to make them worthwhile, and you'll always see people electing for a particular option other another, leaving the others on the back-bench.

I'd rather see a smaller, more refined and preferably *interesting* array of armaments, then 40+ trace-spitting bullet weapons. Unreal has a lot of diversity in it's arsenal, and you can respect that. It's also reasonably broad. Counterstrike has a very broad arsenal, but little diversity - and a whole lot of redundancy.

You need to give people reasons for choosing certain options over others. Personally, I feel that can often come down to the functionality. In a little project I'm designing for myself (which sadly, will likely never see the light of day), I went with only four weapons. Each of the weapons had very distinct functionality that made them very different from one another. This was further levered with a small number of attachments and modifications, designed to assist facilitating a broader range of roles. If everything is special, rather than generic, then it just doesn't matter if you don't have loads of pointless options to choose from.

Quote:Original post by Iron Chef Carnage
Don't forget balance issues. 40 distinct and interesting guns, 36 of which are specialized for tasks that the player almost never has to complete, boils down to four "good" guns and a library of "try once, then discard" guns.

Four? Even Halo had more than four guns, and it had absolutely no room for the player's preference. If you wanted to use a sniper rifle, there was only one choice. Don't like something about it? That's tough, use another weapon.

Although I've seen plenty of games that employ an arsenal of boring weapons that have no personality, I can still guarantee the possibility of building forty ranged weapons that all have properties unique enough to set them apart.

The only issues I've ever had with games regarding too many weapons (when those weapons are all nearly equal in usefulness) is when they pile them on faster than it takes me to get comfortable with any of them. If done right (ie, not like the typical +10 dmg RPG sword), encountering new weapons and equipment throughout the game can provide a nice incentive to push on. Think Fallout 1 + 2. The player never stops running into new things, but regardless, most of the old things stay useful.

Quote:Original post by Kest
Four? Even Halo had more than four guns, and it had absolutely no room for the player's preference. If you wanted to use a sniper rifle, there was only one choice. Don't like something about it? That's tough, use another weapon.

The Sniper Rifle, Battle Rifle and Beam Rifle and Carbine can all be used for 'sniping'. Halo is full of redundancy, with a plentiful array of characterless and generic weapons. Case in example - would you ever deliberately use a Plasma Pistol over any of the other weapons available at the time? Unlikely. Would you ever elect to use the Assault Rifle? No. In fact it has no reason to even exist, since the role is much better filled by the very similar, but vastly superior Battle Rifle.

Halo is a pretty good example of how not to arrange your arsenal.

Quote:Original post by ambershee
Halo is full of redundancy, with a plentiful array of characterless and generic weapons.

....

Halo is a pretty good example of how not to arrange your arsenal.

That just seems like an absurd perspective to me. It had less weapons than just about any FPS before it. In fact, I would assume that many of the designers who protest against having many weapons are using Halo as a factor in their judgment. It did a lot with a little bit.

Quote:Case in example - would you ever deliberately use a Plasma Pistol over any of the other weapons available at the time? Unlikely.

That's a terrible example. It was my favorite weapon. Its manual rate of fire was incredible, and the charge up blast was highly effective against the elites and green-shield dudes. You could round a corner, see a target, and burn four rounds into their skull in less than a second. The only thing I hated about it was the overheating, which really was a pain in areas with a lot of enemies, but that was part of its balance.

Quote:Would you ever elect to use the Assault Rifle? No.

Are you saying you didn't use the assault rifle because it was too similar to another weapon? I didn't use it because it was improperly balanced and had no power. Personally, I prefer bullet-based weapons to futuristic energy based weapons, and probably would have used it much more, otherwise.

Quote:In fact it has no reason to even exist, since the role is much better filled by the very similar, but vastly superior Battle Rifle.

I might be mistaken, but I don't believe there was a battle rifle in Halo. At least not the first one, which is what I referred to in my post.

The assault rifle comment is pretty uneducated in my opinion. Just looking at the Halo 3 stats on Bungie.net you see a huge variety of styles. For example, I have almost 900% more kills with the battle rifle than with my second best weapon, while most of my friends have melee and assault rifle as their 1 and 2 rank weapons.

As for Halo CE, why would you ever use anything beyond the pistol, sniper, rockets and shotgun is beyond me (with the exception of using the plasma pistol against elites in campaign, or the plasma rifle in multiplayer).

As for the original question, it has almost everything to do with the audience being targetted. Someone like me, who plays Halo, but not too many other shooters don't want a game with 50 guns. We want a smaller number of guns that we can instantly identify (and identify which situations you'd want that gun in). People like me couldn't name you more than 2 real life guns, and we're probably the majority.

One other major issue is weapon balancing (as most others have pointed out). How many games are out there where people consider one or two weapons to be super cheap or totally useless? A lot! For example, was there ever a reason to include the needler in Halo CE other than to embarass your opponent? What about a game like counter-strike where my friends always whine when someone uses the M4 since it's apparently overpowered?