Sergeant Johnson:
"You beat the Halo demo." "Not bad, soldier, not bad at all." "BUT ARE YOU READY TO TAKE THE NEXT STEP?!" "In the FULL version of Halo?" The Halo: Combat Evolved trial is something I used to play every day after school with my older brother. Blood Gulch was the only multiplayer map, so we'd jump on LAN with the other kids at school and there was a lot of screenpeaking, a lot of bullshit, but most importantly, the game got me hooked on It's also incidentally a good example on some of the most important elements in every FPS game. ♪ Strategy ♪ ♪ and Mobility ♪ ♪ and maybe Graphics or something? ♪ I don't know. You can take to the mountains, right, and stealthily snipe for kills or you can fuckin mow everyone down in a Ghost until your older brother steals it from you. These two elements coexist and rely on each other to create a fun experience. However, every game finds their own balance of strategy and mobility. Rainbow Six: Siege, for example, puts heavy focus on the tactical elements of gameplay. Setting traps, creating openings, verbally abusing Tachanka for picking Tachanka. "Our lord Tachanka coming in clutch." And while there's important elements like rappeling on buildings, for the most part, mobility won't be playing too large of a role in the average firefight. Contrast this with a game like Quake Champions, where your mobility is often a deciding factor on the pacing of an encounter. With enough speed and map memory, you can grab the big armor packs and tank up, and just be an all around douche! You can initiate every fight! And if necessary, escape on low health without dying. Your movement here is equally, if not more important than your gunplay. So we have two titles, with vastly different gameplay, and yet, Quake Champions, like many of it's predecessors, is struggling to maintain relevancy. Why exactly is it so difficult for movement games to sell? Champions seeks to bridge the casual-competitive gap by turning it's mechanics into class skills. Bhopping, Air strafing, Double jumping, all now unique champion abilities. Unlike it's ancestor games, where everyone has access to an even field of mechanics, now there's counter play, which dilutes the raw skill of every matchup. Additionally, the game runs on Saber Engine trying to imitate Id Tech, which means instead of a half-decent engine, you get stuff like this: "...savage exchange." [sounds of disbelief] That's alright, that's fine. It's only a million dollar tournament, it was probably a fluke anyway. "...their prompt, but there's the drop into the armor but cooller was kind of waiting for it..." Yeah, that seems fine to me. At the same time, it's a hard sell for new players. Despite a class system, it's still intended for high level play, and if you're inexperienced, you inevitably find yourself being curb-stomped on every step of the Penrose Stairs. by the way. The result of all this is a more accessible Quake title, but a divisive one that doesn't really strike... ...a chord... with any audience enough to retain them. Number 1: It has to resonate with a broad enough amount of players to have staying power. ...is to the FPS genre like Smash is to the Fighting genre. It clearly takes it's own liberties on the formula, but makes for a really engaging party game. To further connect the two, Sky Noon, in my opinion feels like a spiritual successor to TF2's Smash Brothers mod. The objective is to knock your opponent out of the zone, and with the addition of grappling hooks and objectives, it's really FAST OH MY GOD- Guns have this poofy air aesthetic to them that makes them fun as heck to shoot. And items give you an array of recovery options so you aren't completely boned if you get hit. It all sounds fun on paper, it plays fun in practice, so why then, does it have less all-time players than I have Twitch subscribers? Other than a short form tutorial, there's no single player, and without the luxury of a free-to-play model, it's hard to justify the purchase when the servers are so empty. Sky Noon? because it's almost empty. It needs a platform of exposure to reach an audience. That means advertisement, coverage, etc. Lawbreakers had exposure, but it was like the middle child of the genre. There wasn't anything wrong with it, but it didn't have anything to make it stand out. Futuristic sci-fi shooters were out of season when it rolled around. If you want your movement game to sell, Number 3: You need to offer something new, or do what's been done even better. Dirty Bomb was dope as hell. This came out in 2015, so the class shooter craze hadn't taken off yet either. It had much more toned down mobility compared to the other examples, the extent of which being a few wall jumps and sprinting. On the other hand, this made for a pretty cool middle ground between your mechanical games like CS: GO and your momentum games like Quake Live. Just having a single wall jump opened up a lot of routing options. Some of them being intuitive ones anybody can figure out, some of them being... ...excuse me, WHAT- Using your surroundings as a part of your strategies is what makes these mobility options so cool, so it's a shame that the release was followed by four years of skimpy content updates and questionable at best balance philosophies. Fuck the shotguns in this game. Fuck the snipers in this game. Fuck the shotguns and snipers in any game, ever. But ESPECIALLY in this one. Number 4: It needs long-term support through good balance and fun additions. initially struggled for many of the same reasons Lawbreakers did. But unlike Cliff Bleszinski, Hi-Rez was willing to stick this one out and keep supporting the game. It's changed a lot over the last few years of development, and ironically, part of this involved heavily nerfing the mobility across all champions. Early on, vertical movement was hyper exploitable, and while on it's own, it's not necessarily a bad thing, the game itself is already watered down with MOBA designs like huge hitboxes and card builds, so they elected to dial this mobility back and leave whatever remained as horizontal focused, save for a few exceptions. And while movement still plays a large role in the game's balance, flanking options have been highly neutered. What remains of movement is short bursts and safe, and even the interesting abilities the game has to offer are hard to appreciate when the game is still so forgiving with it's aim. Despite this, Paladins managed to climb it's way up to a respectable playerbase. While it may not be high on the top of Steam Charts, the fact that it lands on this list at all may as well be a sign of moderate success in itself. Overwatch hit every marketing tactic it needed. It offered something new. It had a large platform of exposure. And it was appealing to both inexperienced players and competitive players. But despite this acclaimed success, you'd find it difficult to not hear even the most devoted players passionately complain about the game. At one point, Genji could dash at an edge and gain insane mobility, but it was tricky to pull off. This made for a cool strategy, and that's exactly why Blizzard removed it, because new players couldn't use it the same way an experienced one could. Each hero is intricately designed to be a one-size-fits-all solution to skill gaps. In Quake Champions, to rocket jump, you acquire a rocket launcher, fucking shoot yourself, and trade off one rocket plus your health for a brief boost in mobility. In Overwatch, you hit Shift. This makes mobility accessible, and in a genius way, actually sucks in new players by convincing them that they can pull off the same crazy plays they saw on Reddit, which ironically, were not that impressive in the first place. You'd think this was the detriment, but there's a mass market of players, both on PC and console, who want the thrill of these movements without having to master an engine to do so. Overwatch was the answer to this market demand, and that's why despite it's struggle with competitive play, it retains a core playerbase. Now I bet you're wondering, And that's a stupid question, it's an EA game, it never stood a chance. But you're also wondering, And you'd be right, that's an important distinction. There's still some hope to be found. DOOM came in like a motherfucker, and while it's multiplayer mode is more deceased than a demon who had the misfortune of mistaking Doom Slayer for a travel directory, it's proven that there's still a market for single-player FPS games. If you think you've seen everything, sit down and watch a speedrun of this game. Does noclipping count as a movement mechanic? I don't know. I don't even know what's happening right now. I don't remember what my point was. Fuck, Eternal looks so god damn cool! It has this grapple mechanic, and- [sigh] Alright, back on topic. And yeah, I know it's ironic. Which is why I want to see this design philosophy flourish in the industry. Complex mobility makes for more skill factors in matches, compelling gameplay for impatient people like me, and... I don't know man, it's FUN. Developers, if you're watching, build on your movement just as much as you do your gunplay. Players, if you're watching, STOP USING THE FUCKING SHOTGUN. ♪ The Good Life (Demonetized Again) ♪
I'm kinda sad he didn't go into detail about Team Fortress 2 (though the joke was great), which has a much deeper focus on movement mechanics compared to the likes of OW and take ages to master, but is also accessible enough to draw a large audience and has great longevity.
WALL OF TEXT INCOMING.
I may repeat some of what the video says.
It boils down to the fact that video games have moved from an enthusiast market to a casual market. In 1999 it was reasonable to release a game that was difficult and didn't hold your hand. It was okay if there were some mechanics that were inaccessible to lower skilled players because... just owning the game and the hardware to play it said that you were an enthusiast. All the enthusiasts played the same games because enthusiasts were the only people playing games, so it was easy to maintain a smaller but dedicated playerbase. These days, it's all about the lowest common denominator players. They want to do cool stuff without practicing and if they can't, they aren't interested. The enthusiasts of old still want to play, but now they're spread out over many, many games and they aren't enough to warrant funding a game for their desires. So what do we get? You can see it in every game franchise. Look at the difference between 1.6 and CSGO. Between BF2 and BF3. Between MW1 and... whatever COD is out today. Games are more casual because the players are more casual and more entitled to player power without practicing. As long as developers cave to market pressures to pump out 'accessible' games, players that care about building long term skill in a game that rewards it will continue to be shit on. Competitive players will always still PLAY casual games and complaing (hence it feeling like a lot of people are complaining about overwatch. The people complaining are the ones who simply want a truly competitive game), but casual players won't play competitive games. So what you get is a low skill ceiling mess of a game with faults all over the place that is shoehorned into being a halfassed competitive game. It's a positive feedback loop, one that the video touched on; casual players see streamers and comp players do 'crazy' things and are excited because they can do them too.. just not as often. If they couldn't do it at all, they wouldn't even watch. Basically these days, games are strictly developed for casual players because developers know that they can just throw money at games and game types that are basically non-competitive at their core and turn it into the esports equivalent of a forced meme. League and Dota are prime examples. MOBAs are inherently casual. Take all the competitive elements of shooters but remove the skill by removing a dimension of movement and add items to ensure snowballing. How is that competitive? And yet here we are looking at release after release that basically boils down to 'this is a moba...but in 3D with guns' and it fucking sucks. QC while still better than most like it undeniably has a skill ceiling an order of magnitude lower than QL/CPMA. Overwatch is basically rock/paper/scissors but sometimes you have to aim. It's just awful all the way around and I'm pretty confident it isn't going to get any better with the fortnite generation.
The only truly innovative game out there right now that works as a casual game as well as a top tier competitive game is Rocket League and that is because it has replicated a spirit among players where it's okay to suck. It's okay to be in bronze. You'll get better because the game is fun. Quake is tremendously fun. I've never known anyone to play quake and not get better. Bethesda didn't need to release an easier game, they needed to do a better job of properly teaching players HOW to do things and ADD ADDITIONAL GAME MODES FOR CASUALS RATHER THAN TAKE AWAY COMPETITIVE ONES. If developers ALL just stopped holding your hand and let the chips fall, games would improve overnight.
Funke's pretty great, and a lot smarter than his style may first imply. Not a bad vid, honestly, but I think he's left out that one of the key components of a true "movement shooter" is creative routing and, as an extension, resource gathering. In this sense, Overwatch is not a movement based shooter at all. The maps have only one, and very rarely two, routes around the map, consisting of literally forward and back even on the nominally stationary objective gamemodes, and there's like four rarely worthwhile healthpack pickups on the map and nothing else. They're tiny, they're very far away, and it's almost always more effective to just group up with your healer, whereas even TF2 requires you to pick up ammo, gives much more health on average in the packs, and most importantly are actually frequent and nearby.
Thank you for showing me this YouTuber, funny as hell! And good points too.
He covered a lot of good points, but didn't delve deeply in to any of the points he was making. I think it's a fair summary of today's climate of movement in FPS games, especially for people who don't play them. Ending with talking about the D-word would have been appropriate but maybe he's not aware of it.
Not to be a negative nancy, but those were terribly argued points. Overwatch was successful because it appealed to casual players. But a game's lacks widespread success does not necessarily have anything to do with the quality of the game itself.
I mean, the CoD series has been insanely popular for over a decade now, but I still consider most of those titles to be utterly mediocre in terms of gameplay and innovation.
This guy brings up too many random topics for me to address individually. But the one that stood out to me was the rocket jumping argument. He was completely missing the point of sacrificing ammo and health in order to rocket jump. It's suppose to hurt you if you want that mobility boost.
Skill based games should be emphasized, not this whole modern philosophy of giving everyone participation trophies just for playing. In fact, that's what annoys me about even QC. In many matches, I know I played like shit, but I'm still given all this recognition post match.
It all rings false to me. Balance is a fine line, but kids these days can't enjoy games for the gameplay itself anymore. There always has to be some progression system, loot drops, and a meta game outside of the core game itself. Not that there's anything wrong with any of the aforementioned. I'm just saying that a great game should be enjoyable without all that extra meta stuff.
I'll enjoy classic Counter-strike and Team Fortress forever as along as there's people still playing. Imagine if people stopped playing chess because there's no progression systems or prize money to be won. It would never happen because the game itself is satisfying to play by itself.
So I respectfully disagree with pretty much everything that this guy has proposed.
what was that game at 7:53?
I definitely see some of the points FUNKe is making here, but I do think there are a few factors in QC's struggle that got overlooked - like the way Saber is treating the game overall, what with the huge amount of downtime between matches and the way they're handling unlocks. I for one was really disappointed when I found out I can't even get that sick Q3 Plasma Gun skin I wanted without forking over real money
Remember over a year ago when we warned Sync and Tim about SABER's engine.. yet they ignored us lol and continue to ignore us?
Glad this video was made. "It was only a million dollar tourney!"