Would you suggest a game that rewarded cooperation over kill count could be closer to a realistic experience?

Say, for instance, the opposition were invincible until another team mate spotted them, that'd make for an interesting dynamic. Or even eliminating the K/D completely.

Nice post.

On Worth Reading a few weeks ago there was a good article linked regarding enemy AI, specifically mentioning what you're discussing here. Playtesters hated it and thought it was "cheap". It doesn't seem like anyone will develop something like what you're asking for unfortunately.

Suppressing fire being much more integral to the game would also be interesting but I'm guessing would test as being "boring" and wouldn't make it into an actual game.

Shits tough out there for people that want a more realistic shooter.

Some - not all, some - of what you said reminds me of FEAR.

Is that fun in real life? Doesn't sound it to me, so I doubt it'd be more enjoyable in video game form. Everything you say makes perfect sense (admittedly as a person who has never fired a real gun, let alone been anywhere near a war or battle or anything), but I think you've also illustrated exactly why games aren't developed like that. It's not fun, it's boring, at least in the context of it being a video game where death is meaningless. I'm sure it's probably something more akin to stressful or terrifying to actually be in combat (maybe not terrifying, but you know what I mean).

FEAR came out in 2005 and it still has some of the best AI in a game. Or at least gave the allusion of it...or at least that's how I remember it. At least the enemies didn't move in just straight line and the game didn't feel like a shooting gallery.

If what war is was translated to a game it would be boring. It need to be amped up to be "fun". I ultimately challenge developers to make specific encounters more intense. The Omaha Beach landings in Normandy was a 10 hour fight, most games and movies would lead you to believe that battle was just 20 minutes of dudes running up a beach.

Have more layers to a situation. Make combat a puzzle. Full Spectrum Warrior kinda did this. Give bullets a weight to it, craft an atmosphere that makes a player want to put their head down when an AI barely misses them.

Maybe I want a Dark Souls philosophy applied to a shooter? Make the movement more methodical. Everything needs to be deliberate.

All of this sounds very interesting but not particularly fun.

I always heard Full Spectrum Warrior was good for what the OP describes.

I always liked laying down suppressive fire in Battlefield. For the most part, though, that's a good way to draw attention to yourself and get sniped.

@epicsteve: Now I'm on board if you're saying it should be like Dark Souls, but with guns.

I don't know if you've ever played COD on veteran but you can't go storming in and fight everyone at once.

I've written about this design dilemma at length before on GB but I can't find it now.

Basically, until you make in game death so incredibly bad that nobody even wants to play the game, then you can forget about making a military sim which actually plays & gets played like an IRL military engagement. Every aspect of IRL infantry combat -on both the instinctive and tactical level- is dictated by the people involved really, really not wanting to become dead if they can help it. Take that away and the rest of it falls apart too. IRL engagements would work just like CoD if everybody knew they would get back up again 15 seconds after getting killed.

The only solutions I can see which may go some way to addressing this are to actually make death a massive pain in the ass (like a 'death = you can't play again for a week, and your game is deleted, and your PC is now on fire' level of annoying), or to enforce a whole host of other mechanics which take control away from the player at certain times and forces them to behave how somebody who cares about dying / a trained soldier would. eg. Receiving significant incoming fire would have to literally force you into the nearest cover, whether you wanted to or not.

Ultimately, it's probably possible to overcome this design dilemma, but it's unlikely that it can be achieved in a way which many people would still want to play.

Somewhat. It's a different kind of game. Full Spectrum Warrior felt more like a real time strategy/puzzle game. Coordinating multiple squads around small city blocks to flank, suppress, and eventually take down an enemy.

It's the weird intersection of the military reality and gameplay reality. And now with the popularity of COD I'm afraid too many developers will copy COD rather than go out on a limb and make something more real.

Wasn't america's army supposed to be a realistic shooter?

You do have to care about your life and your buddy's lives.

I'm a Scout in the Army and we ideally operate in really small groups of 4-6 guys. Most people have a really specific responsibility. I'm a Team Leader, I usually operate my own radio but sometimes there's a specific radio guy. You have a compass man that is responsible for the movement and that the team doesn't get lost. Then you might have a guy responsible for carrying certain supplies, sometimes you'll have a medic, and so on.

Essentially, you're fucked if someone dies.

That might not translate to a videogame because when AI dies it's often outside the player's control. But with the death penalty, Rougelikes (is that one word?), have done a great job at reintroducing death penalties while keeping is fun and modern.

I was about to say Full Spectrum Warrior, and then I got to the end of your post and there she be. About the only game I can think of that really delved into area control, which is what I've heard actual small arms confrontations quickly become.

So it seems like you're specifically talking about single player? I've seen Arma multiplayer matches that play out like you've described (i havn't played a lot of Arma multiplayer myself) but it seems to require a group of people who want to play an organized game.

I think Zeus for Arma 3 has potential to be interesting from what i hear about it. Having a military-esque "dungeon master" introduce different combat scenarios on the fly could be interesting.

Outside of that, i believe Brothers in Arms does a good job of creating combat puzzles with it's emphasis on suppression to aid maneuverability but to what extent you're interested in, i don't know.

You've made me think of something along the lines of FEAR's AI and X-Com's 6-character squad, only in a third-person cover-based format like Gears of War. If a character dies, it has to be impactful because he had something integral to gameplay - e.g., the medic dies and you can't heal or can't do anything more than take some morphine or whatever painkiller you might have in the field. Or if your compass dude dies you don't know where to go. And when everyone dies you have to restart the game or the level. Checkpoints, if they exist, can't be generous because you would just shrug and restart when someone dies. Perhaps you could implement an injury system - if a dude gets shot in the leg, he's going to slow down the whole group by quite a bit and if the medic can't get to him, he'll bleed out.

That sounds super-stressful, honestly. I'm sure there's a group of people with Drew-like tastes who would love it. I wouldn't personally, though.

Also, the FEAR thing keeps coming up because, as I remember it, it did have a lot of weight and your movements and actions carried just as much consequence as where you were pointing your reticle. You had to move in that game, you had to be smart, you had to look in a room and, in a split-second, get a good idea of where you want to go and how you wanted to outsmart and outgun your enemies. FEAR is probably way too fast-paced for what you want, but that design philosophy could be applied to something slower and more methodical.

It seems to me like modern military shooters try to capture this same idea, but they fail because everything sticks so damn tightly to a script. The "game", here, mostly consists of pointing and shooting from behind cover at stupid AI, not at managing a team and ensuring that everyone makes it through alive.

There are a lot of games that carry these elements individually. Gears of War, Brothers in Arms, Full Spectrum Warrior, and FEAR, all carry components I think would make a great military sim if combined.

This may be off-topic, but I wonder if there's ever been a military FPS that includes a mechanic for taking prisoners. I can't think of any instance in a game where an enemy AI character decides they've had enough and throws down their weapon.

@epicsteve: Well for whatever reason you're talking about shooters; which are sort of textbook anti-reality simulators. If you're talking actual interesting military situations then something like Sid Meier's Gettysburg! is pretty good; most modern strategy games (including Civ ironically) dumb down or entirely ignore the combat element. Shooters are always going to be pretty stupid because that's actually what's fun to play for the most part, an active military sim on the individual level would be exceptionally dull and uninteresting.

I can't think of any. In most real world situations to my knowledge most prisoners are captured because they're injured and then you just throw them on a medical chopper. Other times it's because you went through a dude's house and found evidence they're link to the Taliban.

That can be another interesting mechanics to break up fighting. If you do house searches and arrest people, that might be less resistance in firefights. Then again if you're an asshole, civilians will be less likely to help you.

I'd play a sim shooter that wasn't obsessed with being fun, sounds awesome I think. Bring it on.

I feel everyone is going "but what you're describing isn't fun Steve!" and so what? So let it not be purely fun. Stealth games are half frustration half fun so there's no reason you couldn't make a shooter with the same idea.

@epicsteve: I have been wanting an FPS or 3rd person shooter that has actual weight to dying for about as long as I can remember and I really like the idea of rogue-like elements applied to a military FPS. There was an XBox game that had you controlling a Marine Corps fire team and when one of your guys went down, that was it, he was gone, don't remember the name though. And who knows, maybe the multiplayer in a true military sim would be a good place where my not being able to turn off my training wouldn't hamper my proficiency at the game.

The only drawback I really see is that the game would essentially have to train the player to be a soldier and I am sure you will agree that a good portion of that training is pretty boring, even if it is interesting.

The only thing we really got is Arma, and that isn’t good enough. It’s a shame Arma 3 is severely underdeveloped. It’s a real stretch to call it a “sim”, it’s more like a traditional shooter with less flair and complicated mechanics for the sake of being so.

If your main complaint about Arma is that it's not enough of a sim, then I'm surprised you didn't mention it's bigger brother Virtual Battlespace, which is good enough to be used for (limited) training by actual armed forces.

@ltsmash: It even includes AI surrendering and Prisoners of War!

Otherwise, like others have said, there are plenty of extremely realistic military sims that aren't on-foot FPS games. Without getting into the extremely-accurate-but-unbelievably-niche-and-costly strategy titles, there's examples like Steel Beasts (although you can control infantry in it, it's really meant to be 'played' as a crew member in a vehicle, or commanding).

Apologies if I double-post but my last one seems to have vanished into the ether.

If Arma is in the right area but not simulation-y enough, you might be interested to at least learn about its bigger brother Virtual Battlespace, which is good enough to be used for (limited) training by some armed forces.

@ltsmash: It even has AI surrendering/prisoner-of-war functionality!

Otherwise your options are fairly limited while you constrain acceptable games to only the FPS genre. Ignoring the accurate+niche+costly strategy titles, there are examples like Steel Beasts (which technically contains playable infantry but is far more focussed on the crew in tanks or commanding them).

Best way I can think of to make a game where lengthy stationary shooting can be fun is by making it a squad based RTS with suppression mechanics akin to Brothers in Arms, and everyone in your squad can die in 1 or 2 shots if they're out in the open. Sort of like Company of Heroes, only larger in scale.

But when it comes to having full control over one soldier? Not entirely sure.

You really shouldn't be playing Arma with AI dude. Try and seek out some real people, then you'll get your shooting at nothing for 45 minutes.

Arma 2 with Acre and ACE. Go to United Offensive website. They will give you what your looking for

The only game I can think of that really dealt with the concept of suppressing fire is Brothers in Arms.

Yeah the games which tend to do it best are the ones which take player controlled shooting more or less out of the equation and treat combat as a puzzle. Full Spec Warrior and Brothers in Arms being the obvious examples. It's a lot easier to achieve with this style of game than with a typical FPS.

Yep, same here.

You have two teams, you order one to suppress the enemy and then you flank with the other. It has been so long since I've played the game though that I can't recall if there's any more to it than that though.

The only games that I think probably fits your description are the Red Orchestra games, especially Red Orchestra 2. It's not as crazy an infantry sim as ARMA but it's pretty authentic. A single shot will kill you and most of the time you never see where it came from. You even have to dial in your sights to make a shot. I recently got into them and I've actually derived a lot of "enjoyment" out of lying prone on a hill taking shots at specks on the horizon. Commanders can't launch artillery strikes without a squad leader in the field spotting targets and radioing them in. Individual kills are almost worthless yet team actions can win you the game. It has a small community but they're very communicative and frequently call out flanking maneuvers, enemy troop positions and organise assaults on specific positions. Frankly I'm surprised no one else has mentioned it, it's the closest game I've played to your ideas.

brothers in arms had a pretty good suppressing fire system, battle field 3 had better suppresion I feel than bf4. BF4 s suppression doesnt go blurry enough.

I would seriously love a game that rewards you for effective fire rather than the guy that lands the kill shot.

So a diplomacy game?