While playing Jedi Knight II today, I realized what makes a story driven FPS fun for me and what *really* annoys me : the Save/load(n times)/succeed/save/repeat procedure. Let''s take a typical situation in Jedi Knight II which can be found in many other FPS : you are in a room, with 75% energy a few trip mines and grenades (but definitely not enough to waste them) and a relatively deadly weapon (blaster/shotgun type) with very limited ammo. In front of you is a big door. You know that the odds stands high that some foes are standing behind the door waiting for you. You open the door, and behold! Here they are 5 stormtroopers, who all shoot at once. You die more or less instantly. You Quickload, you put a tripmine. open the door again, throw a grenade as soon as you can and go out of sight. You then shoot the remaining stormtroopers. you collect the items scattered throughout the room (ahh ..too bad .. no grenades, tripmines or ammo this time), quicksave and go to the next door. depending on what you find on the other side you either repeat the procedure or, after having reloaded, try to find an alternative way (that''s in JK2 ... most games don''t even have alternative ways) Other possibilites on the same theme are rooms you enter which are empty. Then without warning a wall explodes/collapses/disappear before you can get the healthpacks lying at the other side of the room, and you are confronted with so many opponents all shooting at once that, again, you die almost instantly. (The garbage collector level in JK2 has at least one such occurance) The problem I have with this is that there is absolutely no way you will be able to complete a level without quicksaving/loading as ammo is too scarce to waste on empty rooms and you can only adjust your tactic after you saw what''s waiting for you on the other side. The only game I can think of that gave you the chance to avoid death most of the time is Thief2 (zoom/putting your hear to closed doors/sneaking in), but that''s not really a shooter. Any idea how to solve that dilemna? Or am I the only one that gets annoyed about this? Sammy

Not only annoys me, it''s the main reason for me not to play FPS games.

The only ones I have enjoyed are Deux-Ex and Max Payne, both some kind of genre-mixing and with fresh ideas.

What about randomized level generation, or randomized enemy placement? Maybe the room has five stormtroopers that time, but after dying and quickloading, the room is empty.

Two things that need to be done to make this usable:

1. The game needs to be balanced so that the player doesn''t often die from a surprise attack. There should be time to react.

2. The game shouldn''t let you "play the odds". If the last five rooms, you kept quickloading until they were empty, maybe the sixth won''t be empty no matter how many times you load. Perhaps all remaining unseen enemies should be shuffled around the level each time you load.

quote: Original post by Neodraco
The only ones I have enjoyed are Deux-Ex and Max Payne, both some kind of genre-mixing and with fresh ideas.

Off topic, but which genres did Max Payne mix? FPS and... slow motion?

What difficulty are you playing it on?

Operation Flashpoint is neat, very hardcore as well, you only get one quicksave per mission, so you might save after you''ve completed half of your objectives. Until then though, the game play is slow enough that things could change every time around.

George D. Filiotis
Are you in support of the ban of Dihydrogen Monoxide? You should be!

I concur with the general opinion. I think it detracts from the game big time when you need to constantly quickload to make it through; it essentially says that you can''t finish the game without knowing exactly what lies where - not cool.

For one thing, I think the player should have the element of surprise. The player is going solo, infiltrating an enemy installation; the opponents should either be caught unawares or be alert but unsure of where the player will show up.

Remember Die Hard? John McLane is in the same situation as the player, and even after his presence is discovered and the bad guys are on alert, he still has the element of surprise.

Sneftel''s idea of random relocation of enemies is also very cool, though certain "momentous" confrontations will have to be statically located.

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Thanks to Kylotan for the idea!

The problem is probably more inherent in the balance of the weapons and level design...

if you make weapons highly damaging, they should be readily avoidable - if you fill rooms with enemies then make them easy to kill - bosses should have an exploitable weakness (if its not an RPG attack) and a pattern of attacks.

Then give players limited number of saves - either by way of save points (during mission) or like Operation flashpoint number limited. Place them far enough as to be challenging but not so far that they''re fustrating (so before big fights for example) or so close that players return to them after every skirmish.

these basic game design concepts never translated too well to the FPS ideology however... or rather were never observed so well in FPS... (somegames are understandable...)

Zaptruder

It''s a vicious cycle:

- Players want to be able to save whenever they want. It''s understandable...

- Therefore, players will save constantly because it give them an advantage.

- Therefore, if designers balance the difficulty without assuming the player will save every 3 steps, the game is too easy.

- Therefore, designers must balance the difficulty with the assumption that players will save constantly.

Unfortunately, the baby gets thrown out with the bath water, because the designers can no longer create surprise or a sense of danger.

To break that cycle, the designer has to stand up to the player, saying in effect "You think you want to be able to save whenever you want, but really you don''t." Some people would find that to be a very arrogant decision on the part of the designer. It will also frustrate players and especially reviewers.

I think the checkpoints in Halo did it fairly well. They weren''t too far apart that it got annoying having ot retrace your steps and they weren''t so close as to make them useless.

I think as designers we should just say to the player "no, you can''t save wherever you want. Think. Be alert. Watch out for ambushes". Of course then you also need to design the levels in such a way as to make these sort of things at least somewhat obvious.