I've been giving First Person Shooter mechanics a lot of thought lately. With my favorite subgenre, FPS-Z, filling up with small and interesting looking games, and my general interest in game mechanics, I thought I would go through the list of features that are pretty standard and familiar to anybody who has played a shooter in the past decade or so. I'll sprinkle in other sections that I feel need addressing, as the genre has certainly changed a lot, and recent developments need to be looked at as well.

FPS has had a strange trajectory in terms of how they have been designed, and their current design DNA is very different from what was considered "standard" in the late 90s and early 2000s. Some of the mechanics that have crept into the genre and made a seemingly permanent home, I believe, do not pull their weight, and I believe are often included in games, just because other popular games are including it as well. This does not directly lead to badly designed games, but I believe that it does lead to the genre becoming incredibly boring and stagnant, if not addressed.

This blog post is in Early Access, meaning that I will be filling in blank sections as I go, and will certainly update it erratically for at least 12 years. And no refunds! I will probably aim for one section per day, given I have the time.

Sprint

Short and Sweet: Sprint often leads to combat being only about aim and reflex, rather than aim, reflex, and smart re-positioning, and can lead to poor designs in maps.

Sprinting in FPS games started popping up more and more, I believe, after Gears of War, and Modern Warfare the following year. Gears was the first poster child of the Xbox 360, and set a lot of standards for the console, and Modern Warfare added a few other things that appear on this list. Games that didn't have sprint before, like Halo, now do. Most games, as far as I can tell, just take sprint as a given. They want players to get back into the action as soon as possible, so it becomes a natural addition. "Realism" is also a common reason to see sprint in a game. Halo is actually an example of sprint not being a given, and in Halo's case, there is a strong feeling in segments of the community that sprint does not belong in the game whatsoever. (Reasons for this range from how sprint changes rules of engagement, map design, and match pacing)

However, in my opinion, sprint is by far the most boring movement mechanic ever implemented in FPS games. It promotes taking linear pathing, and is usually paired with a slower base movement speed, which results in player interactions that are more homogeneous. With a slower base speed (because most games don't let you shoot while sprinting), player movement during a gun fight is nonexistent, and it becomes more about just aiming and reaction times, and not smart movement. This bleeds into other sections, like Aim Down Sights and PvP Duel Times.

Sprint doesn't have much of a downside. In nearly every game I play or watch, if a player isn't aiming down their sight or actively shooting, they are sprinting. The cost of lowering your gun is so low, it may as well not even be there. I don't see many people carefully turning corners in order to gain a real advantage in the first second of a fight.

So why not just remove sprint, free up a button, and increase the base player speed? The reason sprint can exist is that it allows players to move at a speed that normally would likely be a problem otherwise. If a player has a high movement speed, and can strafe back and forth quickly, aiming becomes a crapshoot for a lot of players. It can be even worse if there is an elevation difference- being in an elevated position makes player models seem to move in a more 3 dimensional space (Left and Right, closer/further, and also up and down. Level encounters don't have up and down unless a player jumps, but that hardly counts).

Map designs can suffer as well. Modern Military Shooters are generally spread out and flat to begin with, so in order to make certain distances seem correct to the designer (for example, how far should the flag stands in CTF be in terms of seconds to capture?), the map space becomes stretched out.

Regenerating Health

I think that overall, I like regenerating health as the standard in FPS. But I think that health kits still have a place in a lot of games. Any game where it takes a long time to frag a player, should probably not be using regenerating health.

I believe it is more important for developers to understand their game in other ways, and how regenerating health affects the gameplay loop. I don't like incentives to play very passively for the majority of the game, and both styles of health management can cause that, just in different ways. FPS games should be more about aggressive tactics, making players move around the map, and also towards each other.

Average Time of PvP Duels

I really dislike games with very low average kill times. Duels in FPS games should be more than a twitch, a strafe, or a spray in their general direction. Fast fragging times lead to what I would call a false sense of interaction, where there isn't any room to outplay the other player. It becomes more about shooting first, and in some games, having better internet.

I also dislike most one shot kill weapons, especially ones that you can spawn with. They are generally one dimensional, and even if they are situational, the reward for putting yourself in that situation is high. This includes a lot of sniper rifles. I know excluding snipers from a game would confuse everybody, but I'm not a fan of one sided interactions(other player may not be able to fire back unless they have a sniper themselves).

Aim Down Sights

I don't have a problem with ADS aiming, but I do have a problem with how it is implemented in some games. ADS generally creates two firing modes. ADS aiming is generally always the same, but the "hipfire" mode is what changes. In some games, hipfire is a joke, while in others, it is on par with ADS aiming. Another thing that commonly happens with ADS aiming schemes is when you pull up the iron sights, your moving speed gets capped lower than normal. My favorite thing about FPS games is the combination of movement mechanics and aiming mechanics, so I do not like the idea of a zero sum scheme (less movement for more aim).

ADS also inherently makes the control scheme more complicated. If the game actually presents the hipfire versus ADS options as a real tactical decision in the heat of the moment, that complexity is probably worth it, but if the correct choice is to always ADS, then the system is just making what was a one button action into a two button action.

Multiplayer Communication

Many Similar Guns or Few Unique Guns

Team Sizes

Mod Support

Business Model

Player Progression Systems

Hitscan VS Projectiles

Jetpacks in non FPS-Z games

Number of Weapons Held

Lots of old FPS games let players hold everything they picked up, and then Halo popularized restricting weapon options (in this case, restricting to "any two weapons, but no more"). Other games throughout the decades have used many different schemes, but they can all be generalized by how much restriction they put on players. This concept is also loosely tied to how weapons are acquired (picked up on map versus loadout screens). Basically, the more weapons a player can hold, the more complicated the gameplay can potentially become.

-One weapon (maybe a sidearm): Player is basically relegated to playing a very specific role. If they pick a sniper or a shotgun, they are making a very deliberate sacrifice in weapon range. These type of schemes need tighter balance to work, because players will try and find the best "all around" weapon, and if that kind of weapon exists, gameplay can become less diverse. Niche weapons are riskier to put into the game, because any kind of extreme oddball of a weapon runs the risk of becoming a liability (In Halo, imagine somebody with only a Plasma Pistol versus a Battle Rifle, and how their options differ during a game).

-Two Weapons: This is a nice sweet spot, because the game system can be very restrictive, but the player still has a lot of ability to overcome weakness in their loadout. The basic scenario is selecting a "main" weapon (probably the player's favorite weapon), and then selecting a weapon that compliments it, either by being good where the main weapon is bad, or synergizing in a particular way (not common, but imagine the Plasma Pistol again).

-Three or more Weapons: Diminishing returns probably makes an appearance after the 4th or 5th weapon is included. At this point, the player can probably amass enough weapons to cover every situation. It becomes less of knowing what kind of weapon before you need it, and just knowing what to use at a given time. Weapon switch times becomes more important here - too much time, and the game appears to be punishing players trying to use all of their weapons, and too fast, and the optimal way to duel other players becomes very hectic and complicated.

Map Design: Open or Segmented?