I love FPSes ever since DooM. DooM is my favorite game of all time. I want to make a good FPS some time but at the moment I tend to make platformes with FPS elements.

Nowadays however FPSes are all becoming so bland and similar and dumbed down. I've been getting this feeling for a while now with Call of Duty coming out every year and Crysis 2 copying some of its elements. My eyes were really opened to this once I played through Duke Nukem Forever. All of their single player campaigns are becoming extremely bland. Somehow the multiplayer doesn't suffer as much though IMO.

Duke Nukem 3D was great back in the day and had really interesting levels where you explore and find secret areas. Duke Nukem Forever on the other hand is basically a giant on a rails shooter more or less. It got horrible reviews but basically all FPSes are like this nowadays. Call of Duty is like this especially. The Battlefield bad company 2 campaign is more or less like this also. Even games like Doom 3 were heading in this direction although it wasn't as bad.

Another thing people complained about in DNF was the two weapons limit which I think makes a lot of sense and like overall in most games. But in Duke Nukem it didn't seem to work well. The levels end up being packed full of random guns lying on the ground from enemies you kill and you run around picking them up. I find my games suffering from something similar. Gone are the glorious days of running around picking up health packs and ammo boxes. Now you only pick up ammo by running over weapons. The two weapon limit is fairly realistic but maybe it's not right in every game, especially one like Duke Nukem.

Something that made classic shooters great was the nonlinear levels. They seemed so well thought out. There were cleverly hidden items in secret areas. Here's a great joke picture illustrating my point.


My favorite secrets are ones where you can see the item. You want it badly. But you have to find a way to get it. My other favorite secrets are ones that aren't just a random hidden closet. I like secrets that are entire huge areas of the level that you never see normally, but the designers put time and effort into them. Doom's ppisode 1 Knee Deep in the Dead has some of the coolest secrets ever. I sortof feel like Shores of Hell and Inferno are much less inspired levels with very bland secret areas for the most part. In Knee Deep in the Dead however, the secrets are very clever and I feel a sense of wonder when I find them. It's like WHOA there's this crazy hallway here leading to this outdoor area I never even knew I could access.

Basically here are some ideas I think to make the FPSes of today a little less bland.

• Completely nonlinear levels with interesting secrets like in the glory days of Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake, etc... No more of this On a Rails shooter crap...
• Interesting and helpful items that are worth hiding in secret areas. Nowadays it's always only weapons. Regenerating health means no need for health packs. I think bring back health packs. I'd probably do it the way FEAR does it. You can carry health packs and heal yourself if you need to.
• Change the two weapon limit to fit the game better. It had no place in DNF but I think it makes sense in most other games. I like the idea of maybe having extra weapon slots like 3 or 4 rather than only two. Gives you a bit more choice at the expense of being super realistic. Also I think there needs to be a reserved slot for a sidearm at least. I find myself never picking up pistols ever again except for in Halo 1. I like how Gears of War did it. A pistol slot and have different pistol types. That way you always have a pistol to fall back on and are more likely to use it. I even like Counterstrike and other shooters that do this like Battlefield. You have a side arm and a primary weapon. That's all you can hold. I've only seen this done in multiplayer so I don't know how fun it would be in Single Player games.
• Avoid boring fights and make sure they are interesting. Stop trying to focus on super amazing graphics so we can have more characters on screen at once. I happen to like Doom 3 for some reason but it had an awful flaw. This might have been because of tech limitations at the time but you mostly would fight small amounts of enemies at a time. The worst is when enemies teleport in one by one and you kill each in succession. In the original Doom games the levels were alive with monsters everywhere and you often fought hordes at a time. In doom 3 it would become a tedious battle of killing one guy, waiting for the next to teleport in, killing that guy, and so forth... DNF had similar battles. Especially one where you are on a roof and you watch dropships dropping off two enemies at a time. How crazy would that battle have been if all of them were dropped at once. Also Call of Duty has some really frustrating moments that are the complete opposite. I end up fighting like 50 guys at once and I'm getting shot up and taking damage. The worst are the parts that are just hard and I have to keep dying and trying over and over until I finally get past that part for the hundredth time. (Ahem... Modern Warfare Ferris Wheel part, and Modern Warfare 2 parking lot level with lots of running around, and Blackops Viet Nam level where I was supposed to run up to the explosive barrels and hit my use key)

How can you say Doom/Duke was nonlinear? Nonlinear means that you do not follow a single path in order to get somewhere. Doom just had more rooms that made you sidetrack -- you could not jump from level 1 to level 21 and then back to level 13. All FPSes I've played were linear, some of them made me backtrack (like Quake 2), but all in all it was just following a thread. Nowadays, it is just more eye-gouging to the player that he has absolutelly no way to moev around.

Take this into account: DNF -- wide open spaces that you cannot reach due to invisible walls. Doom -- closed spaces that make sense (you cannot drill solid rock with your hands no matter how much you try). It's all about the feel. Some games feel more linear than others.

I agree the 2 weapon limit is just stupid -- I praise games like Serious Sam or Doom 3 for allowing me to carry a whole mass of munitions, so I can adapt to any given situation. Nowadays it's like "Hmm, should I carry this low ammo nuke or take a full shotgun? Won't there be a boss around the next corner? Will I find an ammo replenish for my current weapon"? Indeed the newer games received a new set of rails -- the old rails grew grass, dirt and stains that made them nearly invisible. The new, shiny ones taunt me.

I think this happened due to the focus switching from battles and mechanics (Doom had little story, it was new and fresh due to other content) to story and character development. Why does every single guy nowadays have to have a sob story in his testosterone flooded body? The Doom soldier was a mute badass who just plowed through zombies. Dom (GoW) just cries over Fenix's shoulder when he didn't see guts spilling out for too long. Bring back characters where the story and motives were mine, goddamit! Don't make me play a ponce who has a really stupid agenda I do not care for.

>.>

FPSs have always been stale... you're just catching up.

How do you make it less stale? Make other game genres or add other genre elements to FPSs

How can you say Doom/Duke was nonlinear? Nonlinear means that you do not follow a single path in order to get somewhere.

Or perhaps we're talking about story arcs?

When it comes to me, the king of non-linear level design is Thief 1 by Looking Glass Studios (1999) or perhaps Deus Ex by Ion Storm (2000). Now, Looking Glass studios run amok for a variety of reasons. The fact that some players might not even get to see half of the content is possibly one of those reasons. Amplify this with nowaday's budgets and detail level and I'd say we would have a sure recipe for total disaster.


It seems like the "frag everything that isn't you" motto does not apply anymore, I suppose it's just trend but real point is that this formula sells and people vote with their wallets. I will never get tired of explosions!

Most of what i can think of has already been pointed out. The one idea that i could add, that may be a bit to the left of the actual topic, is that FPSs have not so much gone stale but instead there's an over emphasis on large companies to make a specific subgenre of FPS at any one time.

For instance the popularity of COD has lead to AAA FPS games to copy their gameplay. Take DNF, it should belong to the "fun'n'gun" subgenre of FPS that was prevalent in the early to mid-90's but it has instead tried to shoehorn itself in with the semi rail based shooter genre like COD. I remember a review putting it well when he said something to the effect of "On its own it's not a bad FPS and could be quite entertaining. But you can hardly justify the name Duke on the front of the packet, the game and the name just don't match up."

You could argue that FPS's where stale back in the 90s since most of them copied the DOOM style of play. The big name titles are always going to be like this since they tend to be safe bets for the big devs for a few years at least. If you want something different to whatever the current big name FPS are doing then it's a case of looking around and finding a smaller budget FPS's or even looking at Mods for something a little more different.

In all honesty the FPS genre is rather narrow in just its definition so out of all the genres out there it will be one of the first to get that stale taste about it.

Its pretty much the reason I purchase and play so few FPS games...they are all too much alike. Although reading this thread kind of gave me a craving to go play a good FPS game, so this morning I fired up Metroid Prime on my Wii and had a blast playing it all day. Maybe the problem with FPS is that there is too much emphasis on the shotting part? I realize that might sound ironic, but I'm having just as much fun with solving puzzles and finding secrets as I am with actually being in combat, and because I'm constantly switching from fighting to puzzle solving to exploring, the game never feels stale.

FPSs have been stale *since* DooM.

Well I guess DooM 2 was OK...

[size="4"]I love FPS games, but, I will admit that they're starting to get a little stale. Which is why I'm developing a Modular First Person Shooter Weapon System (GunVertor) for my FPSRPG in which the player can assemble an assortment of custom weapons, give them names, and character. Weapons are assembled from interconnecting weapon parts that are highly detailed, animated, and alive not stale. Each part effects the player, weapon, and ammo in various ways.