MW3 you manage to shoot down half the Russian army pretty much by yourself (and they almost line up to let you do so)

Bioshock where you slaughter hundreds of opponents pretty much the same way and literally murder children to get further in the game.

Bullet Sponge player characters in all these games when a single bullet in reallife usually takes you out of the action.

You would think they could come up with alternatives to make the games less a slaughterhouse and more varied ("you kill one russian soldier/splicer youv'e killed them all".)

You can still spectacularly blow things up in various creative ways. The guns can still go bang bang and things kaboom with glitzy special effects.

Wouldnt making your enemy take to their heels and not stop running be a similar ego boost for the player? Still count as 'beaten' ?

How about clever distractions/blocking an enemy to nullify them?

More wounding and disabling instead of an obvious "he's dead jim" ?

Or is it just 'too hard' for these game companies who use nealy the same game logic as 10-15 years ago on the same old trigger box choreographed terrain situations. Too much budget for fancy scenery/special effects/cutscenes, when the behaviors (and game mechanics of possible actions) are left in their 'good enuf' stagnation?

SO what else can we have the players/game do ?

More capturing enemies (get points for that) and Incompacitation is what counts.

More enemies that run away/surrender (with a few that might come back so you better keep your eyes open)

More effects of wounds on YOU to shift the way you have to fight (ditto for enemy)

More actions to cause distractions/obscuration/blockage of the enemy to handle them (and they do the same to you making you use the terrain on-the-fly more)

More obvious wounding (instead of death) that you know they are out of the fight

More emphasis on the objective rather than bodycout for scoring

More interesting results that can suprise the player (quality over quantity of deathdealing)

More tactics/actions to handle situations (may have to have player fed directions from 'sarge' to clue them in to what they can do for a situation instead of 'scream and charge' like they were bulletproof.)

Things that stand in the way of improvements:

Players who dont want to have to think

Costly programming/assets that eat into the profits when the suckers keep buying the same old thing anyway

Steeper learning curve for more options/actions to use them right

Chronic mentality of Ego and Insta-gratification

Harder to make a game free flowing (well short of a stealth game)

Things that stand in the way of improvements:

Players who dont want to have to think

Steeper learning curve for more options/actions to use them right

This is pretty much why these types of games don't exist. Nobody seems to have the patience to actually learn a game anymore. It's just "lets kill more russians/afghans - beacuse our favourite game labels them as terrorists."

It's a shame, really

Things that stand in the way of improvements:

Players who dont want to have to think

Steeper learning curve for more options/actions to use them right

This is pretty much why these types of games don't exist. Nobody seems to have the patience to actually learn a game anymore. It's just "lets kill more russians/afghans - beacuse our favourite game labels them as terrorists."

It's a shame, really

I have to disagree - that particular point stands in the way of games with massive budgets from improving. If a game has a massive budget, it has to do something to appeal to as many people as possible, while often not introducing that much. Still, even AAA titles take steps in making changes to this extent, though not as many.

But if we're talking about just pure improvement, niche games and generally indie studios can make games targeted towards people who are interested in figuring out games, or just putting in more thought whilst playing a game. So technically that one point doesn't really stand in the way of improvement.

What about something drastically different from combat? What if enemies didn't shoot on sight? What if you could approach and try to nagotiate, bribe, persuade, lie to them - all based on completely different player abilities/stats and all having their own separate chance of success?

What if enemies gave warnings to player if player does not seem to pose a direct threat? What if you didn't have to walk with your weapon out all the time, as if you're just out to kill people.

I think the main problem is that these things aren't as straight forward to implement or even conceptualize as 'shoot enemy -> make enemy's red bar go down -> if red bar == 0, enemy is dead

Not that there aren't systems to do this sort of thing, but it seems like often games split the social interactions and combat interactions completely. When was the last time you had the option to try and reason with an enemy while fighting them? Or ask him to surrender and you'll spare his life? At best what I've seen is a situation where you talk with a neutral npc, who then says something akin to "and now I have to kill you" and the game then defaults to its fighting mechanics.

I'd be interested in trying to design a system like that to see if it's fun.

"What about something drastically different from combat?"

I actually have a longer blob of text in progress that talked about that - take a 'thought experiment' about how Bioshock could be turned into an MMORPG (I agree wont happen), but with the motivation to capture rather than kill Splicers to cure them and rebuild the City. As a MMORP it would be more a campaign with long term results and more time to 'figure things out'. I was trying to compose ways such a game would have alot more varied situations and outcomes for the player in the world. There would be alot less fatality and many more ways of dealing with inhabitants in the still 'uncivilized' parts of Rapture..

Lots more traps and tricks and coersions and reasoning even.

But as observed, it would take a major programming project to create the behavior logic for that (something companies general think gets in the way of the profits... and IMO most couldnt do if they tried).

Thinking about it - how well can these games present you a situation to discern and you can largely do it intuitively and not have to read 6 pargraphs to get across an opponents intent/motivations/etc so you can chose the right tactic/actions to get done what you need. I suppose you can make the indicators overt (telegraph it so a syphilitic rhesus mokey 'gets it') and alot of the time it could be, but other times the player should have to piece things together and even make small moves that bring out the information (without it being unsubtle and precipitating an unwanted bloodbath) -- in other words players actions would need subtleties as would the opponent NPCs..

How many players could sit still for a game that was even a little like that ??

Maybe there would be a whole nuther group of players to be attacted to that kind of game who are turned off from the violence whoremongering so many computer games are today.

But as observed, it would take a major programming project to create the behavior logic for that

Nah, I think you could potentially prototype this with something as simple as a command prompt application (no visuals necessary, unless of course you must incorporate some animations as a visual queue, and even then those could be textually expressed)

The question is how to make it challenging, fair, not dull (i.e. requiring some thought), AND keep it fun all at the same time.

But as observed, it would take a major programming project to create the behavior logic for that

Nah, I think you could potentially prototype this with something as simple as a command prompt application (no visuals necessary, unless of course you must incorporate some animations as a visual queue, and even then those could be textually expressed)

The question is how to make it challenging, fair, not dull (i.e. requiring some thought), AND keep it fun all at the same time.

I meant to make the whole thing work 'the whole enchilada' (the logic needed to operate in the whole game with the plethora of sitations) because there would need to be many other aspects of the game that would have to warp to support it (internal states and behaviors (AI) for the NPCs .to get tehm to act out appropriately)

But yes you could prototype pieces of it just to see if there is anything in it - limit it to a few chosen situational scenarios. Something like 20 questions to classify the situation and then use different logic trees (tree customized, varying with the perp involved who has varying inclinations and motivations).

Extra credit would be generalizing the 'solver' more (more AI than narrowly choreographed)