Hi,

So been thinking about this for a little bit.

We are nearing our playable public demo for our 1st project, and I'm looking towards the horizon.

originally we were not going to do this genre, but 'm mulling over a few design concepts.

What would you want and or expect from a project that tries to innovate this genre? and what would you cut from the conventional FPS?

GeneralJist said:
what would you cut from the conventional FPS?

I would cut anything that has been added over time: Reloading weapons, and extended movement (e.g. dash on pressing the left way button two times).
The perfect example seems Quake → Unreal. Epic has added such things, either while aiming to innovate, or just to be a little bit different from the original.
Now Unreal players may disagree, but following the argument ‘easy to learn, hard to master’ to conclusion is obvious: Adding complexity bloat does not make it easier, and so it does not make it better either.

GeneralJist said:
What would you want and or expect from a project that tries to innovate this genre?

Sadly, the more you'll try to innovate classical core mechanics, the less it will work. That's really demotivating for all of us i think, but it's the hard truth.

Still, there were some innovations that worked:
Zoom in for sniping weapons, e.g. Quake 3 but mostly MDK. That's great, but only for single player.
Jetpacks, e.g. Tribes. Also great, mostly for multi player i would say. It's a way to make playing on boring hight maps interesting.
Vehicles or Portals.
Various game modes. Capture the Flag… Battle Royale…. and finally now ‘Extraction Shooters’? (I do not even know what that means.)

Coming up with something new seems hard. If you want to innovate, i would not touch the core mechanics too much, but rather focus on level design and enemy behavior. Here innovation is possible and welcome.
For example, modern games tend to heavily underuse dynamic level design, speaking of moving platforms or skull rafts from Super Mario. The jump pads in quake 3 were also great. But modern games are way too static, making them boring.

However, if we are really ambitious and not willing to accept FPS is done and can't be improved anymore, it's easy to see the main limitation of FPS:
Jumping lacks accuracy and we can't get back what we've lost from 2D platformers. You can't see your feet and the ground, so it's hard to time your jump from the edge. And worse: FP lacks oversight, hindering not only tactics but also distance estimation needed for advanced platforming.
I think i know how to solve this btw. My idea involves to sacrifice FP immersion but using some ‘robust’ TP camera instead, which also works for interiors. What i have in mind would force players to get comfortable with some new things, likely feeling pretty unusual at first. Similar to back then, when people had to learn mouse look to play post Doom FPS games. Not sure how this works out, and it's hard to try since traditional rendering is not ready for my idea either.

But yeah, imo the main problem of FPS is bad oversight at the cost of immersion. Back then the immersion was so impressive it was worth the sacrifice, but today there is no more wow effect of ‘being in the game’, and that's why FPS is pretty dead. (Beside shitty console gamepads ofc., since you can not even do a proper FPS on consoles.)

To say it differently, you worked on RTS the most afaik. The question from that perspective is: How can we make the global connections and actions of an RTS observable in a FPS?
If we can answer this, potential to innovate opens up in all directions. We could finally merge genres ‘for real’, and probably much more than just that.

I don’t know if modern FPS games already have this feature but controlling bots using speech recognition is an idea. I think this is plausible.
Another idea that also has to do with communicating with bots is to have them keep the human player/players up to date by spoken word about the things they are currently doing. I know bots in Unreal will talk to you once in a While but they provide little information. I was once thinking you could have a viewport in your hud displaying what the bots are seeing. The problem with that is that your mind is submerged in the level based on your own camera view switching to a different view means that you need to step out of your current view and step into the bots view. Basically you need time for adaptation. You can’t be on two maps(views at the same time). With sound it’s a different story but it still requires some degree of multi threading on your minds behalf. Who knows one day maybe technology will allow us to be in two places at the same time.

I personally hate jumping in computer games. But I doubt that many players feel that way.

I would love if there is a story. I liked Halflife because there was a story.

This could be an interesting thread to keep going. Lets try to break down what an FPS consists of:

• The character controlled by the player
• Movement and possibly special-abilities for the player-character
• Gunplay, including tactically reloading and conserving ammo.
• Interactable props such as collectible weapons and powerups, or vehicles or teleporters
• NPC enemies, and their abilities and behavior.
• NPCs that are neutral or friendly.
• Characters controlled by other players.
• Interactions between characters
• The level itself
• The UI, including HUDs that are always visible, and maps and other secondary screens.
• The overall gameplay model (such as story missions, openworld, going from A to B, corridor-shooter, team-shooter etc)
• Changes to each of the above, either as a result of player or other character actions, or the progression of time or the game world.

Did I leave out any? Every FPS can be broken down into how they set themselves apart in one or more of those categories. I'm sure if we all worked on brainstorming small ideas for each one, it could get interesting in aggregate.

All the recent hero shooters have been working on the first three points, with unique characters abilities and weapons, so that would be an uninspired direction to continue in.

Brian Sandberg said:
Did I leave out any?

I think of a few:

• Interactions of the player with the environment. That's usually just pressing buttons to call elevators, or mounting a static turret. Things like that. Not too interesting. I always think we could come up with more interesting dynamic environments. I think of complex machinary, raising bridges or opening up new pathways. Puzzle stuff, but ideally not too constructed. Something that enables optional, creative gameplay. But i fail to come up with somethign concrete.
• The quick save function. In early FPS this was used as an actual mechanic. This could be extended. Imagine some time travelling backstory, and you can do some character build. Skill trees and such crap. And now you can use your saved games to travel to the past, but you can combine the saved states, and take one advanced character build from the later game to an earlier section. Being more powered up you can now do some things you had failed on early, and maybe this enables some other progress at a later time. But not sure if i would like this. Maybe i would feel the save game management is just complexity bloat and this should not be needed at all.

Brian Sandberg said:
NPCs that are neutral or friendly.

That's where i personally see most potential to innovate.
I think of the scientists in Half Life. I would like to get such behavior, but not from scripting, rather entirely procedurally.
It's fun to predict enemy behavior. The same should work for friendly NPCs. Maybe i could affect them indirectly, so they do things which help me. If i can make them to walk in front of me, they could ignite landmines or catch some bullets, etc. I would like that. >: )

JoeJ: I would like to get such behavior, but not from scripting, rather entirely proceduraly

You need to tie a chat bot to a problem solving algorithm that works in a 3d environment I think. Here is an idea: a bot A in a room monitors all objects inside the room ( to see if interactions between objects take place ) if for example another friendly bot B appears in the doorway that’s an interaction between an object and a character ( which is just another object ) hence bot A which is observing the environment for changes will use a greeting phrase. If an object is about to fall on bot B bot A will use a phrase to signal danger. Its not that complicated. Some scripting needs to exist IMO, open ended, MMO type games are boring. The world needs to be going somewhere.

The reason I’m saying you need a chat bot is that if the environment is changing that affects what the characters are saying and doing. It’s difficult for a robot to scan the environment in a game you don’t have such worries. Once a bot enters the room it’s easy to pass a list of objects that are found inside the room.

JoeJ said:

I think of a few:

Oh I thought I had the interactable vehicles/structures, but yeah, quicksave and all that kind of meta-level stuff. That would also include level editors and similar customization of the game, along with matchmaking and server/game hosting and anything that goes into joining a game.

Matchmaking feels like a problem that hasn't been solved. I used to play a few rounds of Overwatch regularly, but these days 90% of random matches result in extreme one-sided defeats or victories which can be called within a minute, instead of the balanced brawls that are fun. It might not be a sexy feature to work on, but I can think of few things that would do more for the genre.

We should also try to bound the range of ideas that would actually classify as “FPS innovations”, as opposed to turning it into another genre. It's easy to throw ideas at the wall and end up with a first-person puzzle game, or a vehicle sim where you also occasionally shoot a gun.

Calin said:
You need to tie a chat bot to a problem solving algorithm that works in a 3d environment I think. Here is an idea: a bot A in a room monitors all objects inside the room ( to see if interactions between objects take place ) if for example another friendly bot B opens the door in the room that’s an interaction between an object and a character ( which is just another object ) hence bot A which is observing the environment for changes will use a greeting phrase. If an object is about to fall on bot B bot A will use a phrase to signal danger. Its not that complicated. Some scripting needs to exist IMO, open ended, MMO type games are boring. The world needs to be going somewhere.

Regarding AI chatbots i'm doubtful. I expect a new all time high of low brow, AI generated content is coming.
People will only accept this crap if their content addiction is already that bad, so they indeed listen to a machine talking to itself. Or even worse, they will talk with those machines themselves, more than to their (probably non existing) family.

Will a future society indeed accept an AI entertainer?
Idk. But probably not all people will. And i'll certainly join the resistance, serving them with ‘handmade’ games if i can.

Calin said:
Who knows one day maybe technology will allow us to be in two places at the same time.

What technology should this be? Neural brain implants or other transhumanism ideas? /:O\

Omg that's even worse. Facing a rising AI god is one thing, but becoming one with it? Fuck, no.

I really think there is a point where we have to stop developing useless tech further and further, at latest once that tech imposes a threat to our society and economy, health or even biology.
And maybe that point is now.
Altman and Jensen can take their AI crap and shove it up their asses, so it goes back to where it comes from.
I don't want it, and i will not use it.

So i will design around a need of dynamic conversation in my game. All this blah blah and cutscene nonsense is just boring anyway. It's a tool movie makers work with, but it's not for us game devs imo. Games are not about talking NPCs. If i need that, i'll do a multiplayer game, letting real people play a role and talk. And if i need intelligence in a game, i will use my own to fake it well enough.

But maybe that's just me, and AI will give us those new and awesome games we desire.
Maybe our lacking creativity can indeed benefit from such AI crutches. We will see, but i hope not.

Otherwise i agree about your examples.
I think friendly NPCs need a routine. Something simple and predictable.
Maybe they are workers in a factory. They work on a conveyor belt. It's all part of some larger mechanical machinary i've mentioned before.
They produce bullets. And the conveyor belts are actually supply lines, transporting ammo to some distant outpost of enemy guards.

Notice: Instead proposing brain implants so you can ‘imagine two different places at the same time’,
i rather attempt to build up motivation for the player, so he uses imagination to think about the option of manipulating the supply line. The player may not actually see those larger scaled relations visually, like he would in a top down RTS. But it is enough if he has reason to think about such large scaled relations. Then he will just do it: Sabotaging the supply line, eventually by manipulating worker NPC behavior, and then enjoying to beat out of ammo guards easily. It will be fun to the player, and we come closer to the goal of merging FPS and RTS mechanics.

Ofc. it's some work to figure out all the details, but i see no need for dynamic NPC AI conversation. And expecting ChatGPT NPCs won't be practical on consumer hardware, i have no interest in related cloud services anyway.

Brian Sandberg said:
We should also try to bound the range of ideas that would actually classify as “FPS innovations”, as opposed to turning it into another genre. It's easy to throw ideas at the wall and end up with a first-person puzzle game, or a vehicle sim where you also occasionally shoot a gun.

I'm afraid we are done with that, and thus the goal of inventing a new genre is our only option to innovate at all.

I'm still primarily a FPS player. But the genre is dead. Not because modern AAA studios fail on it, but because it's just done. It's over, like Rock'n'Roll.

The best games i've played last year were the new Amid Evil DLC, and the Quake II remaster.
Both those games are FPS masterpieces.
But from the current day perspective, neither game tries to innovate. No new ideas. Just perfect level design, basic movement and combat.

You can't do it any better. No way.
If you want to do better, you have to do something different.

Question:

Is nostalgia as big in the FPS community than it is in other communities?

I wonder…