How realistic can you get? Taking damage.

Well seeing as realistic games are quite popular, and let's face it, if it's a good game and realistic you sometimes can't help but be sucked into the game and feel like you're taking down helicopters, fighting dragons or feeling the wight of the world on your shoulders as you try to find that last bottle of clean water or a can of food for yourself or someone else, I've decided to try and 'analyse' and try to give examples of how video games are realistic and what they could do top be more realistic. You may not agree with me, so just post what you think would be good to make a game more realistic. In this, we're facing the problem of damage.

How much do you take? How much do your enemies take? How much do other players take? How the fuck did he kill me in one shot?!

The Call of Duty franchise

Call of Duty has gained in popularity over recent years, maybe because the campaigns have gotten better (or worse, I'm not writing this to shit on CoD). CoD4 to CoD8 (or Modern Warfare 3) have been quite fast paced games. While not perfect, or free of some plot holes and inaccuracies, it does make a player sit on the edge of their seat sometimes (or makes me sit on the edge of my seat sometimes). A lot of the games catch the eye by putting in some explosions (again, i'm NOT critiquing the CoD franchise, I'll leave that to you guys), some cool set pieces and some nice ways to tell the story to the player.

The damage in CoD can sometimes be quite messed up. You die in a single shot sometimes, and it doesn't have to be a headshot! But maybe this is accurate? The human body isn't exactly designed for taken bullets, and humans in general are very hardy organisms. A single shot could possibly incapacitate the average human. A shot in the leg will leave you with a nasty limp for probably the rest of your life, a shot in the lung may leave you with breathing problems and a shot in the arm could mean you have to have it amputated. These points aren't exactly features of CoD, or (m)any FPS's, but you can die very quickly on the multiplayer. A couple shots can sometimes kill you, a barret 50cal could kill you in one shot with a shot to the body, a knife seems to be able to kill you instantly. But if we just think about it, if you take a 5 cm bullet to the chest or back and survive, you may not survive for long. You're mid battle, your covert operation has been exposed and you've taken a hit. Do you think you could make it out? Probably not, so maybe these outrageous one shot kills are accurate? They may not kill everyone instantly, but because of CoD's quick gameplay it's probably saving you a lot of time rather than spending a few minutes sitting there bleeding out as you're team gets annihilated. But if we wanted to get really realistic we would bore the players half to death as they die.

Silencers... It always says it affects the range of the gun. That shouldn't be so bad right? But no. They actually take down the damage of the gun, even at close range it still takes more bullets to kill your enemy than without a silencer. Silencers do reduce the speed/velocity of the bullet slightly in real life, I'm not sure by how much. I'm fine with not doing much damage over long distances with a silencer, but not when I'm firing a million shots into their face. The bullet's speed/velocity doesn't honestly matter if your maybe ten metres away, unless it's so low the bullets bounce of off the other guy's skin. So maybe silencers should have no affect on damage, but that wouldn't lead to a realistic game because you'd be able to kill people from across the map without endangering your position, but that's a whole other kettle of fish that I'm not writing about at the moment. The damage over long distances may not be entirely accurate either. The bullets may not kill the enemy quickly, but firing two magazines into the enemy to kill them is unreasonable and unlikely because most people would sprint off in the other direction. If the bullets are hitting the enemy, and going into them (the X on CoD shows you're doing damage and presumably the bullets are penetrating the skin) then maybe you would kill the enemy. The bullets may not go in too deep, but if there are a few, or even a lot, of bullet wounds the enemy may die anyway. Of course this may be after a few minutes, the end of the round or never if they have access to some sort of medic (which CoD doesn't have). Difficulty selections on the campaign may have to be removed if they really wanted to get the damage right. The same damage multiplier they used for multiplayer, would be used for singleplayer. If they wanted it really realistic and consistent, they would make the campaign so enemies were easy to kill, but you could die just as easily.

Fall damage is another thing, a whole other beast really. You can fall 15 feet and survive, you can fall 30 feet and die. I'm not sure what the exact life/death distance is, but falling 15 feet isn't healthy. You wouldn't be able to sprint right after it as well. Presuming you were well trained, and landed correctly without breaking anything, you would feel like your legs and pelvis had gone up a foot or two, leaving you heavily winded and with sore knees. You may not take much damage, you likely won't die, but you may carry some sort of 'affliction' or 'ailment' for the rest of the match. You could get incapacitated, break an ankle or a leg you won't be very mobile, and may even be left just sitting there if your character reacted to pain realistically. If you break an arm you could walk about, maybe run for short amounts of time but not shoot very well/not at all. Limb damage may need to be added, but the fall damage for limbs and gun shots would have to be different.

Knives. The ultimate weapon it seems. You can shoot across the map and stab somebody with a knife... ok, maybe not quite, but still it's crazy how your character leaps into somebody with their knife. The multiplayer always shows someone being slit with the knife. This would be very painful, but somebody could get over it. A shallow cut across the stomach would cause bleeding, some pain but if the bleeding was stopped, you wouldn't die. A deep cut could leave you incapacitated, and bleeding to death depending on the angle and size. A slit across the back would be like the shallow cut for the stomach, except a lot less painful and maybe a bit less blood. But a deep cut could kill you. If the 'stabber' was able to cut through the spinal cord by going through the gap in between vertebrae (unlikely, but who knows what could happen?) you would die pretty soon or be left paralysed from the waist or neck down, or go brain dead from the amounts of blood lost. Stabbing is another issue. A stab is a lot more fatal than a 'slashing' because the entire length of the blade can enter the victims body. A stab to the chest could puncture a lung (maybe flooding it with blood) or go through the heart. The stomach is a pretty vital area, a stab their could kill you (it can kill instantly!) or incapacitate (that word again) you for the rest of the match, or until you die. In real life it can leave you unable to eat certain types of food because of the fact there's no where for a certain protein or sugar to be absorbed into, but when was the last time you ate food in a CoD game? This concludes the CoD 'analysing', please leave a comment if you think I've missed something out (I most likely have) or if you have a wrong... different opinion about how the damage can be made more realistic!

Battlefield 3

Say what you want about this game. 'It was great'. 'It was a rushed, buggy piece of shit'. 'I'm indifferent about this game'. There are still hints at realistic combat. I played the Beta and notice that everyone took a good few bullets to kill. I thought it was really unrealistic, but now I look back and I think it is accurate to an extent. All the soldiers fighting were wearing armour. I have no idea what it was... kevlar? Some sort of other super strong polymer? But it made me realise. 'Dem guyz are fightin' with bulletproof armourz!'. Maybe not entirely what I thought, but it 'enlightened' me to thinking, that maybe, ten or twenty shots is in fact realistic to an EXTENT. The bullets wouldn't penetrate the armour in a single shot, maybe a few shots. But they would leave you winded, like a heavy punch to the stomach or chest. They could even make you fall on your ass. It would be interesting to see everyone falling over or sit down to catch their breath after a single spray of LMG fire. But it wouldn't be fun. Not at all. If you were shot at from the side you would be likely unprotected and just die quickly.

To be brutally honest, I'm very tired, and I can't think of much more than that. I guess I did cover a lot of points that would have been in BF3 in the CoD section. Go read that again.

The Elder Scrolls

From First Person Shooter to First Person Sword-magic-mace-axe-shield-fantasy-dragons-FUS-RO-DAH-spears-pauldrons-you-face-is-made-up-of-five-polygons, I will 'analyse' the Elder Scrolls franchise.

We moved onto guns because they were far more efficient than swords and bows. They had an immense range and were often fatal if they hit you. Of course that was quite a while ago when losing a finger could mean death, or even catching a cold could mean death. But it's still true today. You don't see many people using swords. But swords are much more brutal, axes even more so, maces even more so than axes and flails even more so than maces and axes and swords. So while you cut down a Daedra, an Imperial Guard or a Dragon, you could sustain wounds so deep and bloody you'd probably both die. A sword would leave you with either small gashes or chunks of your body hanging off by a few tendons (sorry for the graphic image, but I had to say it), a mace could leave you with bruises or crushed bones, an axe could do the same a sword and much worse and a flail could leave you with crushed bones. The list goes on in terms of horrible injuries, in real life the list could even be infinite as the wound is dependent on the force put into the attack, the sharpness of the blade, the strength of your bones and muscles and the angle of the swing. That being said, there are still so many more factors. Maybe in Oblivion you should be left with only one arm, maybe you should be able to get infections that require medicine or amputation to cure. Maybe in Morrowind you should just die during your first fight with an enemy... Oh wait... Maybe in Skyrim Dragons should always kill you, myabe they should sever an arm or leg and leave you to crawl back to a city or just die. It may not be fun, but it would be realistic if done right. Magic could often have backlash effects, you could use flames and end up getting third degree burns on your palms, which would soon get infected. Or maybe summoning creatures could cause you migraines or headaches due to the concentration required. Stuff that cause pain without killing you, sucked the breath from your lungs or damage your heart because of the spells you use.

There are a lot of games out there, surprisingly, and I could analyse a lot of them, but I'm tired, you're tired after reading that horrendous block of text and I want you, the reader, to also suggest other points I may have missed out of the games I 'analysed' or a game I didn't even bother mentioning.

Thanks for reading.

Well seeing as realistic games are quite popular, and let's face it, if it's a good game and realistic you sometimes can't help but be sucked into the game and feel like you're taking down helicopters, fighting dragons or feeling the wight of the world on your shoulders as you try to find that last bottle of clean water or a can of food for yourself or someone else, I've decided to try and 'analyse' and try to give examples of how video games are realistic and what they could do top be more realistic. You may not agree with me, so just post what you think would be good to make a game more realistic. In this, we're facing the problem of damage.

How much do you take? How much do your enemies take? How much do other players take? How the fuck did he kill me in one shot?!

The Call of Duty franchise

Call of Duty has gained in popularity over recent years, maybe because the campaigns have gotten better (or worse, I'm not writing this to shit on CoD). CoD4 to CoD8 (or Modern Warfare 3) have been quite fast paced games. While not perfect, or free of some plot holes and inaccuracies, it does make a player sit on the edge of their seat sometimes (or makes me sit on the edge of my seat sometimes). A lot of the games catch the eye by putting in some explosions (again, i'm NOT critiquing the CoD franchise, I'll leave that to you guys), some cool set pieces and some nice ways to tell the story to the player.

The damage in CoD can sometimes be quite messed up. You die in a single shot sometimes, and it doesn't have to be a headshot! But maybe this is accurate? The human body isn't exactly designed for taken bullets, and humans in general are very hardy organisms. A single shot could possibly incapacitate the average human. A shot in the leg will leave you with a nasty limp for probably the rest of your life, a shot in the lung may leave you with breathing problems and a shot in the arm could mean you have to have it amputated. These points aren't exactly features of CoD, or (m)any FPS's, but you can die very quickly on the multiplayer. A couple shots can sometimes kill you, a barret 50cal could kill you in one shot with a shot to the body, a knife seems to be able to kill you instantly. But if we just think about it, if you take a 5 cm bullet to the chest or back and survive, you may not survive for long. You're mid battle, your covert operation has been exposed and you've taken a hit. Do you think you could make it out? Probably not, so maybe these outrageous one shot kills are accurate? They may not kill everyone instantly, but because of CoD's quick gameplay it's probably saving you a lot of time rather than spending a few minutes sitting there bleeding out as you're team gets annihilated. But if we wanted to get really realistic we would bore the players half to death as they die.

Silencers... It always says it affects the range of the gun. That shouldn't be so bad right? But no. They actually take down the damage of the gun, even at close range it still takes more bullets to kill your enemy than without a silencer. Silencers do reduce the speed/velocity of the bullet slightly in real life, I'm not sure by how much. I'm fine with not doing much damage over long distances with a silencer, but not when I'm firing a million shots into their face. The bullet's speed/velocity doesn't honestly matter if your maybe ten metres away, unless it's so low the bullets bounce of off the other guy's skin. So maybe silencers should have no affect on damage, but that wouldn't lead to a realistic game because you'd be able to kill people from across the map without endangering your position, but that's a whole other kettle of fish that I'm not writing about at the moment. The damage over long distances may not be entirely accurate either. The bullets may not kill the enemy quickly, but firing two magazines into the enemy to kill them is unreasonable and unlikely because most people would sprint off in the other direction. If the bullets are hitting the enemy, and going into them (the X on CoD shows you're doing damage and presumably the bullets are penetrating the skin) then maybe you would kill the enemy. The bullets may not go in too deep, but if there are a few, or even a lot, of bullet wounds the enemy may die anyway. Of course this may be after a few minutes, the end of the round or never if they have access to some sort of medic (which CoD doesn't have). Difficulty selections on the campaign may have to be removed if they really wanted to get the damage right. The same damage multiplier they used for multiplayer, would be used for singleplayer. If they wanted it really realistic and consistent, they would make the campaign so enemies were easy to kill, but you could die just as easily.

Fall damage is another thing, a whole other beast really. You can fall 15 feet and survive, you can fall 30 feet and die. I'm not sure what the exact life/death distance is, but falling 15 feet isn't healthy. You wouldn't be able to sprint right after it as well. Presuming you were well trained, and landed correctly without breaking anything, you would feel like your legs and pelvis had gone up a foot or two, leaving you heavily winded and with sore knees. You may not take much damage, you likely won't die, but you may carry some sort of 'affliction' or 'ailment' for the rest of the match. You could get incapacitated, break an ankle or a leg you won't be very mobile, and may even be left just sitting there if your character reacted to pain realistically. If you break an arm you could walk about, maybe run for short amounts of time but not shoot very well/not at all. Limb damage may need to be added, but the fall damage for limbs and gun shots would have to be different.

Knives. The ultimate weapon it seems. You can shoot across the map and stab somebody with a knife... ok, maybe not quite, but still it's crazy how your character leaps into somebody with their knife. The multiplayer always shows someone being slit with the knife. This would be very painful, but somebody could get over it. A shallow cut across the stomach would cause bleeding, some pain but if the bleeding was stopped, you wouldn't die. A deep cut could leave you incapacitated, and bleeding to death depending on the angle and size. A slit across the back would be like the shallow cut for the stomach, except a lot less painful and maybe a bit less blood. But a deep cut could kill you. If the 'stabber' was able to cut through the spinal cord by going through the gap in between vertebrae (unlikely, but who knows what could happen?) you would die pretty soon or be left paralysed from the waist or neck down, or go brain dead from the amounts of blood lost. Stabbing is another issue. A stab is a lot more fatal than a 'slashing' because the entire length of the blade can enter the victims body. A stab to the chest could puncture a lung (maybe flooding it with blood) or go through the heart. The stomach is a pretty vital area, a stab their could kill you (it can kill instantly!) or incapacitate (that word again) you for the rest of the match, or until you die. In real life it can leave you unable to eat certain types of food because of the fact there's no where for a certain protein or sugar to be absorbed into, but when was the last time you ate food in a CoD game? This concludes the CoD 'analysing', please leave a comment if you think I've missed something out (I most likely have) or if you have a wrong... different opinion about how the damage can be made more realistic!

Battlefield 3

Say what you want about this game. 'It was great'. 'It was a rushed, buggy piece of shit'. 'I'm indifferent about this game'. There are still hints at realistic combat. I played the Beta and notice that everyone took a good few bullets to kill. I thought it was really unrealistic, but now I look back and I think it is accurate to an extent. All the soldiers fighting were wearing armour. I have no idea what it was... kevlar? Some sort of other super strong polymer? But it made me realise. 'Dem guyz are fightin' with bulletproof armourz!'. Maybe not entirely what I thought, but it 'enlightened' me to thinking, that maybe, ten or twenty shots is in fact realistic to an EXTENT. The bullets wouldn't penetrate the armour in a single shot, maybe a few shots. But they would leave you winded, like a heavy punch to the stomach or chest. They could even make you fall on your ass. It would be interesting to see everyone falling over or sit down to catch their breath after a single spray of LMG fire. But it wouldn't be fun. Not at all. If you were shot at from the side you would be likely unprotected and just die quickly.

To be brutally honest, I'm very tired, and I can't think of much more than that. I guess I did cover a lot of points that would have been in BF3 in the CoD section. Go read that again.

The Elder Scrolls

From First Person Shooter to First Person Sword-magic-mace-axe-shield-fantasy-dragons-FUS-RO-DAH-spears-pauldrons-you-face-is-made-up-of-five-polygons, I will 'analyse' the Elder Scrolls franchise.

We moved onto guns because they were far more efficient than swords and bows. They had an immense range and were often fatal if they hit you. Of course that was quite a while ago when losing a finger could mean death, or even catching a cold could mean death. But it's still true today. You don't see many people using swords. But swords are much more brutal, axes even more so, maces even more so than axes and flails even more so than maces and axes and swords. So while you cut down a Daedra, an Imperial Guard or a Dragon, you could sustain wounds so deep and bloody you'd probably both die. A sword would leave you with either small gashes or chunks of your body hanging off by a few tendons (sorry for the graphic image, but I had to say it), a mace could leave you with bruises or crushed bones, an axe could do the same a sword and much worse and a flail could leave you with crushed bones. The list goes on in terms of horrible injuries, in real life the list could even be infinite as the wound is dependent on the force put into the attack, the sharpness of the blade, the strength of your bones and muscles and the angle of the swing. That being said, there are still so many more factors. Maybe in Oblivion you should be left with only one arm, maybe you should be able to get infections that require medicine or amputation to cure. Maybe in Morrowind you should just die during your first fight with an enemy... Oh wait... Maybe in Skyrim Dragons should always kill you, myabe they should sever an arm or leg and leave you to crawl back to a city or just die. It may not be fun, but it would be realistic if done right. Magic could often have backlash effects, you could use flames and end up getting third degree burns on your palms, which would soon get infected. Or maybe summoning creatures could cause you migraines or headaches due to the concentration required. Stuff that cause pain without killing you, sucked the breath from your lungs or damage your heart because of the spells you use.

There are a lot of games out there, surprisingly, and I could analyse a lot of them, but I'm tired, you're tired after reading that horrendous block of text and I want you, the reader, to also suggest other points I may have missed out of the games I 'analysed' or a game I didn't even bother mentioning.

Thanks for reading.

No game is realistic. Especially FPS. Call Of Duty is not the exception, nor is any other one. I would love to see a realistic FPS though. I think it could be done.

Some adventure games are "realistic" but only because the games mechanics allow that.

@TheWholeDamnShow said:

No game is realistic. Especially FPS. Call Of Duty is not the exception, nor is any other one. I would love to see a realistic FPS though. I think it could be done.

It was called Rainbow 6 on the PC. One good shot and you're dead. Plan a break without checking a corner? Whole team dead in seconds. It may not have been super real, but it was as close as it's been in video game FPS. . . Though I haven't played those Arma games.

btw, I'm talking the first R6 and Rogue Spear. Things have gotten arcadey since.

I've been thinking recently that if you're playing a cover based shooter, maybe instead of taking bullets when you peak out of cover, the game just automatically takes you back behind cover if you were going to get shot, but after doing that too many times, you'd eventually take a bullet as a warning, and then the next bullet would kill you. At the same time I think a lot of people would feel cheated out of a kill if they game is constantly putting them back in cover to avoid a life taking bullet.

I've been thinking recently that if you're playing a cover based shooter, maybe instead of taking bullets when you peak out of cover, the game just automatically takes you back behind cover if you were going to get shot, but after doing that too many times, you'd eventually take a bullet as a warning, and then the next bullet would kill you. At the same time I think a lot of people would feel cheated out of a kill if they game is constantly putting them back in cover to avoid a life taking bullet.

@TheWholeDamnShow: @Fobwashed: @TEHMAXXORZ: From my experience PC mods seem to offer the best in terms of realism.

There are several games out there that strive for some level of realism, including Arma, Red Orchestra, Operation Flashpoint and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. As they have mechanics already in place, modding to elevate realism is supposedly quite easy. Arma and OF have 'down but not dead' systems which have been modded for a little more realism. Take a heavy hit and you'll be on the ground; you can call for medical help but its not as simple as getting back on your feet, from then on you'll be effected in many ways including movement speed, aiming accuracy and resistance to further damage. It gets a little too crazy for me personally, but yeah mods are out there for those looking for more realism.

@kingzetta:

There are also mods for Jedi Academy and other games in the Dark Forces franchise for lightsaber realism :)

@Fobwashed said:

@TheWholeDamnShow said:

No game is realistic. Especially FPS. Call Of Duty is not the exception, nor is any other one. I would love to see a realistic FPS though. I think it could be done.

It was called Rainbow 6 on the PC. One good shot and you're dead. Plan a break without checking a corner? Whole team dead in seconds. It may not have been super real, but it was as close as it's been in video game FPS. . . Though I haven't played those Arma games.

btw, I'm talking the first R6 and Rogue Spear. Things have gotten arcadey since.

Then to that effect Counter Strike

@TheWholeDamnShow: Indeed, FPS really aren't realistic, even the 'realistic' features I mentioned are more on the unrealistic/hyper-realistic side. But if a game was totally realistic, it would be very boring. I guess it's why games stick to unrealistic/semi-realistic gameplay.

@Dagbiker: Fallout: NV's hardcore was quite cool, forcing you to drink eat and sleep. It may not have been life like, but it just put on that extra little pressure.

@ReyGitano: That would be a nice little mechanic to get players started at the start of a game, and then to make them take cover later on in a game.

@Fobwashed: Rainbow six... I played that a few times and just thought 'wow, this is extremely difficult'. I took a single shot to the leg once and died... annoyed the hell out of me. But looking back now I guess it was just a way for the game to speed up the gameplay, instead of me crawling around with a shattered shin and then taking a shot to the head...

@IkariNoTekken: STALKER... I knew I had missed out something big.

That was pretty hardcore, I played it for 3 hours and absolutely enjoyed every minute of it. Even though my PC is so crap it can barely run it on low settings... Steam sales FTW! I am building a computer however, so I will one day experience STALKER on high settings!

One-hit kills are as unrealistic as bullet sponges.  If one-hit kills were realistic, 50 Cent would be dead nine times.  Hell, 50 Cent is the original bullet sponge.
 
Immersion is not about realism, it's about verisimilitude.

@Brodehouse: One-hit kills can be unrealistic, but (in the example of the sniper rifle ) a single shot could kill. Probably not instantly, maybe after a few hours of losing blood.

ARMA 2?

Tim Schaefer says games should be about wish fulfillment.  If you're wishing about stuff that's real your imagination is dead.

I'd rather have "movie" realism then real life-it's just more fun. And I can tell you the LD 50 for falls is about 30ft. This means that 50% of people who fall from that height or above die from some sort on injury.

@WickedFather: @JCGamer: I'm not really saying I wish the video game industry turned to making Real life: The video game. I'm just looking at some of the semi-realistic parts of games and seeing how they can be made more realistic, in this case the damage. To be honest, Real life: The video game would be boring as hell.

@ReyGitano said:

I've been thinking recently that if you're playing a cover based shooter, maybe instead of taking bullets when you peak out of cover, the game just automatically takes you back behind cover if you were going to get shot, but after doing that too many times, you'd eventually take a bullet as a warning, and then the next bullet would kill you. At the same time I think a lot of people would feel cheated out of a kill if they game is constantly putting them back in cover to avoid a life taking bullet.

Well the Uncharted games do something similar. Nate doesn't have health, he has luck. Basically as he's out of cover and getting shot at, his "health/luck" goes down, but he never gets shot until he runs out of "health/luck", then he gets shot and falls over dead. I wish more games did this. The more time you spend out of cover, the more likely it is for you to be shot and killed. Makes sense.

One of the things I like about BF3 (and I suspect many people hate just as much) is that bullets have drop. It doesn't matter much until you're sniping, but I like what it adds to that game. And although bullets aren't modeled to the same degree as something like ARMA, I'm glad it made it into BF3. And I'm equally as glad that it didn't make it into COD (multiplayer), because I don't think it'd be a good fit for those games' mechanics.

As far as realism being "boring," I think ARMA is far from boring, despite being able to be killed by one good shot. Same with the older Rainbow Six games. In those games, it's not just about shooting faster and straighter than the other guy. The approach to a combat situation becomes critical, considering how much less damage you can take, if any at all.

@WickedFather said:

Tim Schaefer says games should be about wish fulfillment. If you're wishing about stuff that's real your imagination is dead.

I don't think so. As a kid me and my friends, and I am sure many of you here as well, played what we called "Guns." This basically entailed up running around each others houses, and pretending to shoot the shit out of each other with plastic guns. As we got older it evolved into more tactical situations(such as swat vs criminals, where swat had to successfully rescue hostages like CS), and eventually we got to the age of being able to go paintballing and using air soft guns. During most of these different play days, paintball outings, and when we did airsoft wars we pretended we were involved in war/cop scenarios. So I think games like rainbow six, call of duty, battlefield, and ARMA all cater to these fantasies me and my friends have had since we were children.

@TheWholeDamnShow said:

No game is realistic. Especially FPS. Call Of Duty is not the exception, nor is any other one. I would love to see a realistic FPS though. I think it could be done.

It was called Rainbow 6 on the PC. One good shot and you're dead. Plan a break without checking a corner? Whole team dead in seconds. It may not have been super real, but it was as close as it's been in video game FPS. . . Though I haven't played those Arma games.

btw, I'm talking the first R6 and Rogue Spear. Things have gotten arcadey since.

SWAT-mother-fucking-4. Period.

Isn't the point of games to be less realistic?

Until 2 weeks ago the game that I'm working on was won by shooting the other duder one single time. Then I added a unique health/scoring mechanic. Within one day of coding my game quadrupled in funnesstude.

Of course I'm sure that there is a way to do realistic damage and have it be fun, but that's a significant challenge. It would probably depend on giving players meaningful cues about when they are going to be attacked, and then giving them a fun way to avoid it.

@MikkaQ said:

@ReyGitano said:

I've been thinking recently that if you're playing a cover based shooter, maybe instead of taking bullets when you peak out of cover, the game just automatically takes you back behind cover if you were going to get shot, but after doing that too many times, you'd eventually take a bullet as a warning, and then the next bullet would kill you. At the same time I think a lot of people would feel cheated out of a kill if they game is constantly putting them back in cover to avoid a life taking bullet.

Well the Uncharted games do something similar. Nate doesn't have health, he has luck. Basically as he's out of cover and getting shot at, his "health/luck" goes down, but he never gets shot until he runs out of "health/luck", then he gets shot and falls over dead. I wish more games did this. The more time you spend out of cover, the more likely it is for you to be shot and killed. Makes sense.

Doesn't that mean everyone in that game has incredible amounts of luck considering how many bullets it takes to take enemies down?

I kind of wonder if you're missing the point of realism. The point is to trick your brain up to a certain threshold such that you feel as if what's going on in the game is plausibly connected to your actions as the character. So you may wonder why it is that you have the ability to carry several weapons that are extremely bulky and still sprint like a marathon runner but you accept it as one of the narrative assumptions. So for the sake of narrative we assume all of these impossible things but we can still attribute realism to the subsequent events afterwards. It's similar to when someone complains that a science fiction movie is corny or ridiculous when "x impossible thing" happens, when in fact the entire premise is not real to life anyways. So really realism is more about allowing you to feel something's plausible in theory and that there are in fact concrete rules in place of some sort.

So making a game that completely simulates life is just not going to happen. You're always making ridiculous assumptions to create an environment that is actually fun to play around in.

Short answer short. Adding in a bunch of gameplay mechanics intended to make a game more realistic is a good way to waste time on game mechanics that end up either being gimmicky, a nuisance that hinders good gameplay, or something that bogs down the competitive experience of a match. I could add a shopping list of examples, but that's not worth the effort.

Ask yourself this: What makes a multiplayer game so great? How can you make a game that is balanced and fair, yet still emulates the intensity and ferocity of a real battle? Many developers have tried, but have only learned the hard lessons of failure. CTF/TvT modes in the Arma series are the closest to realism as one can get. But Arma is not a game, it's a Sim. And also it sucks ass.

@ReyGitano said:

@MikkaQ said:

@ReyGitano said:

I've been thinking recently that if you're playing a cover based shooter, maybe instead of taking bullets when you peak out of cover, the game just automatically takes you back behind cover if you were going to get shot, but after doing that too many times, you'd eventually take a bullet as a warning, and then the next bullet would kill you. At the same time I think a lot of people would feel cheated out of a kill if they game is constantly putting them back in cover to avoid a life taking bullet.

Well the Uncharted games do something similar. Nate doesn't have health, he has luck. Basically as he's out of cover and getting shot at, his "health/luck" goes down, but he never gets shot until he runs out of "health/luck", then he gets shot and falls over dead. I wish more games did this. The more time you spend out of cover, the more likely it is for you to be shot and killed. Makes sense.

Doesn't that mean everyone in that game has incredible amounts of luck considering how many bullets it takes to take enemies down?

Yeah see going the other way around is where it all falls apart I guess. Still, beats any other explanation for regenerating health.

@MikkaQ said:

@ReyGitano said:

I've been thinking recently that if you're playing a cover based shooter, maybe instead of taking bullets when you peak out of cover, the game just automatically takes you back behind cover if you were going to get shot, but after doing that too many times, you'd eventually take a bullet as a warning, and then the next bullet would kill you. At the same time I think a lot of people would feel cheated out of a kill if they game is constantly putting them back in cover to avoid a life taking bullet.

Well the Uncharted games do something similar. Nate doesn't have health, he has luck. Basically as he's out of cover and getting shot at, his "health/luck" goes down, but he never gets shot until he runs out of "health/luck", then he gets shot and falls over dead. I wish more games did this. The more time you spend out of cover, the more likely it is for you to be shot and killed. Makes sense.

Yeah that seems like a pretty good way to approach it and keep the game somewhat fun.

I don't think we want realistic damage models in games - they wouldn't be fun at all and would probably feel random and arbitrary to someone who has no real experience around firearms.

also I hear that knives are far more deadly than firearms within about 15ft or so. but I think most of that info came from stats about cops dying to knives before they could get their gun out and aimed effectively.

Twisted Metal is the most realistic game ever.

I've been thinking recently that if you're playing a cover based shooter, maybe instead of taking bullets when you peak out of cover, the game just automatically takes you back behind cover if you were going to get shot, but after doing that too many times, you'd eventually take a bullet as a warning, and then the next bullet would kill you. At the same time I think a lot of people would feel cheated out of a kill if they game is constantly putting them back in cover to avoid a life taking bullet.

first game that came to mind with real FPS is rainbow six vegas series. the game is a slow game where you raid casinos from terrorist. you have to play realisticly like throw a flash in a door way and then rush in.

I like the idea of having bullets skirting you, causing physical 'cloth/armor' damage until they start hitting you.

This is just a personal statement, but realism in games has gotten as close as I ever care for it to get. The most "immersive" or whatever games are not very realistic at all. Skyrim, Dead Space, and Bioshock, all considered quite immersive, and none realistic in damage or the effects thereof. Hell, Isaac Clarke takes a javelin through the lung and shrugs it off in at least one cinematic scene.

I'm all for trying something new, but as long as "interesting and fun" comes before "realistic and lifelike".

Dwarf Fortress has the most realistic and in-depth damage system, hands down.

I like static health like Quake (with shards, armor and health pick ups) or CS (no health pick ups.) I don't need it to be realistic. I just don't like regenerating health.

Kubrick said "there's realistic, and then there's interesting." I tend to agree with him. I don't need more realism in my fiction/entertainment/media. As long as the experience maintains a consistent internal logic, I can suspend my disbelief for just about anything.

Your Elder Scrolls idea sounds like the most horrendous thing ever put onto a disk.

Damage is kinda realistic in say, Mass Effect, wherein you have shields, thick armor that could withstand bullets, and medi-gel to heal you up.

But yeah, damage in games needs more realism. I'm sick of taking on huge crowds as one person, as such a thing is impossible in modern combat. It takes the strategy and realism from games.

if a game is realistic, it's not a game... it's just a simulation program. There's a reason why the simulation genre isn't more popular than it is right now because most people would rather have fun and i'm not saying you can't derive fun from a simulation, there are just less people who actually want to put in the effort and patience into one.

I used to think it was silly that a level 50 fighter could kill a dragon/ demon/devil in 1st edition d&d.; Then I played G.U.R.P.S, where the first blow is often fatal (if not instantly, then from bleeding within a few seconds), and each second of melee combat beyond 10 drained 1 point of strength. that wasn't fun at all. I really like how 3rd edition rules clarified hit points: it wasn't about simple toughness, it was a combinations of skill, luck, and a little Devine intervention, how else does any character survive a fireball spell (which were garaunteed to hit back in the day)?

@SeriouslyNow said:

@Fobwashed said:

@TheWholeDamnShow said:

No game is realistic. Especially FPS. Call Of Duty is not the exception, nor is any other one. I would love to see a realistic FPS though. I think it could be done.

It was called Rainbow 6 on the PC. One good shot and you're dead. Plan a break without checking a corner? Whole team dead in seconds. It may not have been super real, but it was as close as it's been in video game FPS. . . Though I haven't played those Arma games.

btw, I'm talking the first R6 and Rogue Spear. Things have gotten arcadey since.

BF games and other milsims have that. Even a few police sims did too. It's just an increased damaged model. That's not realism. Realism is people getting infected from wounds I can't think of any games which actually do that realistically. Far Cry 2 came closest.

Few games have the kind of scope where you'd ever see infections from wounds though. Realism would be shooting a part of a person and that part stops working. hit em in the left thigh? They can barely use their left leg, and are bleeding out. Right shoulder? They can't do much shooting with that arm. The issue with video games today is that there are rarely casualties, and always kills. And they restrict what the player can do so very much. Not many games let you prop up against a wall, adjust your rifle strap, or change between more than 3 stances. And even if you are able to do things like lay in prone, they prevent you from doing things like rolling on your back, or staying in control of all the parts of your body separately. Hell, Arma, even as a "simulation" is pretty damn limited. I think it's a little silly that games like that avoid things like cover systems, and don't use analog controls for things like stance or leaning (I think arma might support some tracking for leaning, but that's about it.

@WickedFather said:

Tim Schaefer says games should be about wish fulfillment. If you're wishing about stuff that's real your imagination is dead.

Generally a great quote, but you aren't thinking things through, I don't think, if you assume that means any experience in the world that has been had by a human being falls under that. How many people on these forums, or who play games, even games like BF3 and CoD, would actually be willing to join the miliitary? Or even could if they wanted to? And even for people like me, actively trying to enlist and willing to go into a combat zone, sometimes you want to play with something like ARMA because there are weapon systems in there I'll never get to touch no matter how much time or how far I get in the Marines, if I ever manage to gain the title. For people who never want or could enlist in the military, they might want to see what it's like. The same reason documentaries are still good movies.

Hell, even soldiers playing games overseas play games like MW, which are appropriations of modern military engagements, sometimes even in the same regions they are in.

@Fobwashed: Arma isn't very realistic, not the core game anyway. Too much was put into the ballistics model and everything around ammunition hitting targets. You could get multiple headshots on an enemy and not take them out. Plus the AI was incredibly unrealistic. Things like Weapon jams aren't, as far as I know, a thing. Stuff like that.

Orchestra?

@nintendoeats: Realistic damage will probably never happen, because it will be incredible difficult to code and put in all the possible variables and it will be a really un-fun game.

@Marz: Indeed, a life like game would be very boring, and I'm not wishing or saying I want games to become much more realistic, I'm just looking at how games approach the whole idea of 'realism' and saying how it could be more realistic. The points I made are probably not realistic at all anyway. It may not be clear, but I was trying to say a completely life like game would be a complete load of crap.

@deathstriker666: I'm not really asking for these things to added to any game, ever. All the points I made are likely wrong and unrealistic anyway, so whatever game has them would suck. I do like a game that is crazy and 'unrealistic' more than a 'realistic' game. Honestly, I don't want games to get any more 'realistic' so that there's only sims available. I'm just taking a glance at the level of realism in popular games today.

@TEHMAXXORZ said:

@nintendoeats: Realistic damage will probably never happen, because it will be incredible difficult to code and put in all the possible variables and it will be a really un-fun game.

I think that you are underestimating the skills of designers and programmers. We have developed incredible simulation tech (3D renderers are complex spatial simulators in the end), and in the end the underlying theory needed too simulate these things has been developed for other applications eons ago,

New Vegas' survival mode is pretty realistic concerning taking damage.

7 internet points for using a BF2 Daqing Oilfeilds picture as the opening image. 
 
I'm sorry but this topic is rather silly. None of the 3 games you mentioned actually aim for realism, they aim for balance and having a good challenging time, so your entire argument is kinda out of place.

Making a game realistic isn't hard. Making it realistic and fun is. Want ultimate realism? Once you die, your game locks you out permanently because, guess what, in real life once you're dead it's over. End of story. Sound fun?

Realism in in gameplay will always be weighed against the fun of the gameplay. If you get struck by a bullet in real life, you may not die right away, but if it goes untreated you may bleed out in a matter of hours or days. You may be able to stop the bleeding, only to fall prey to sepsis of the blood a while later. Even if you manage to get the treatment you need, you are looking at weeks and months of recovery. You may damage your spine and never walk again. You may get enough tissue damage in your leg that you have to amputate.

That's realistic, but put any of those mechanics into your game, and no-one will want to play it. Would you want to wake up in a hospital after running into too much enemy fire, and spend the next few hours of the game trying to learn to walk again? That said, there are things that I would like to see developers do, if only to unite the realities of gameplay and the cut-scene narrative in the game. I'd like to see the healthbar replaced with a system that measures luck rather than health. Instead of absorbing your enenmies bullets, they wizz by you until your luck runs out and you actually get hit. It may not be realistic that your enemies suddenly turn into stromtroopers, but it would help my immersion, I think.

I'd like a realistic modern military sim where nothing ever fucking happens and you have to perform repetitive fucking tasks every day in thirty pounds of gear in the hot fucking sun. And then at the end of the game something does happen except it isn't fun, it's horribly fucking terrifying and is over in about 15 seconds and it can't ever be retried.