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I don't have a lot of sympathy for a lot of game devs....because so much of what they get wrong is so utterly obvious, it seems that they must be doing it deliberately to piss players off.
You really should try being a game developer. You'd be able to put your money where your considerable mouth is and show all these chumps how it's really done, totally eating their lunch with the magic bullet of old school game design, and all the pros and ex-pros on this board can watch the games industry grind you into a greasy paste. You should really try sniffing my balls. They're extra greasy after being to the gym.
Seriously though. I'm talking about deliberate choices to GET IT WRONG (and I don't mean subjectively wrong like turning Doom into a slow horror-themed game). Choices which sometimes seem to be more obtuse and complicated than actually just letting things be functional for the player. And choices that concern aspects of games that were default RIGHT with the dawn of 3D FPS gaming. Semi off-topic though so feel free to ignore those issues... Unbindable controls Fixed FOV Un-disablable headbob Unskippable intro movies / adverts Unskippable dialogue / cutscenes Bad save points before such cutscenes Bad save points related to boss battles Missing or ineffective skill settings Onscreen instructions still with console button hints Wasteful design requiring invisible barriers to herd player. I pretty much agree. You can find all of the above in most of the big titles released in the last 5-10 years. Not all in every game, but usually more than one. Fixed FOV I could live with if the default wasn't almost always poorly chosen. 75 degrees? Really? Unskippable intro spam. Almost every game seems to think this is the most awesome feature ever. Wrong. Very, very wrong. Possibly the most annoying thing ever put in a game. One time only, please, and skippable if not plot or specifically game related Onscreen instructions with console button hints. I always feel embarrassed for the dev who forgot to fix this obvious error. Invisible barriers. This is bad, but what I think is worse is when you can't backtrack even though there is absolutely no reason to prevent it. Unbindable controls Fixed FOV Un-disablable headbob Unskippable intro movies / adverts Unskippable dialogue / cutscenes Bad save points before such cutscenes Bad save points related to boss battles Missing or ineffective skill settings Onscreen instructions still with console button hints Wasteful design requiring invisible barriers to herd player Actioning that laundry list of pet peeves will do absolutely nothing to turn a modern game into an oldskool-feeling game. Since most AAA titles nowadays is really just a complex screenshot generators, they care only about the looks and extreme low FOV might be a cheap hack to solve every FPS problem - wrong scale of characters comparing to world.
I think most of modern games issues could be divided in 2 groups: - it makes better screenies for adds, so screw the player - whole product has only 2 hours of pure gameplay so we will use any possibility to waste player's time the invisible barriers one. That is the only thing in the list that touches upon a non-trivial difference in design philosophy between oldskool and nuskool.
Which is exactly why I say it is semi off-topic. But I think some of those aspects are symptomatic of some modern game design.
It is worth pointing out, that despite my little rantful list, in general there is a lot that I like in modern gaming. I've enjoyed loads of games in recent years, haven't even got around to Alien Isolation and Metro 2033 Redux and Legacy Of The Void and am thoroughly looking forward to XCom2, Dishonoured2, Total Warhammer, and seeing that Doom4 is like, to name a few examples.
Personally I've enjoyed diversifying into other genres, I am also not so attached or even experienced in certain franchises to find their reboots abominable, and have enjoyed Doom3, Tomb Raider 2013, Thief 4 etc. Which is fortunate for me I guess. OTOH I still find the issue in general rather interesting, especially since my favourite recent games have not been pure FPS (as it would have been in the past). Daz and OTP and others were chatting about this in #terrafusion the other night, about how in certain eras there would be truly great and longstanding FPSes, but recently there haven't been. For example in the late 90's: Quake, Q2 Unreal, Deus Ex. In the early 2000's: HL2, Far Cry, Crysis. In recent years.....well WTNO is good but it didn't seem that memorable. STALKER got mentioned but seems a bit specialist. I personally think Dishonoured is the latest brilliant FPS for it's gameplay options (and a neat setting). But the numbers of classics seem to be diminishing. Obviously there is a LOT of subjectivity and personal opinions in the last bit, but I think the point is reasonably valid. Games these days are hugely expensive to make and designed to sell to a casual mass market that will get bored in the first ten minutes unless you hit them over the head with easy, non-confusing, visually spectacular fluff.
You are not going to see a big-budget game made with 90s design sensibilities. You might still see it in the indie scene. Good reply. I think that is a big part of the issue, and indeed confirms that it IS an issue. However I don't think it's out of the question. I've seen devs responds to the backlash by, for example, putting in FOV sliders, and highlighting their action orientated gameplay (and indeed isn't Doom4 doing the latter??). And like Vondur mentions, some games are putting in old skool style stuff - WNTOTOT was quite clear that you could have lots of big guns and shoot them lots. And dropped flaming zombies from the sky - which is definitely in the ethos of things. Are AAAAAAA+++ WB 10/10 cinematic experiences and visceral action / user-friendly controls and options really incompatible?? ...what they get wrong is so utterly obvious, it seems that they must be doing it deliberately to piss players off.
I don't believe there is a conspiracy among devs to piss off their player base, but I can relate to the sentiment in regards to certain things. For every single thing the devs 'miss' there are a thousand other things they saw and addressed. Time, money and sanity are finite resources. I suspect that large amounts of thought and time are put into simply listing and prioritizing things like this to be taken care of and, sometimes, things just don't get addressed in a way that is satisfactory to everyone. That being said, there are some things that I have a hard time rationalizing, like fixed FOV. That shit keeps me from even buying/playing the game. Is it that hard to put in an FOV slider? That's not a snide remark, maybe it really is that hard, I don't know. In any case, it would be nice to see things like FOV sliders, skippable intros, and mouse smoothing options become a standard. The issue as I see it is that games cost a fuck ton of money to make these days compared to the 90's, which means that there is a ton of risk involved in making something that breaks from the accepted mold of modern gaming standards.
Jill game designer loves old skool shooters and has painstaking spent years creating the sickest design doc ever for a modern old skool shooter. Jill shows it to the directors at her game studio and gets laughed out of the room because it isn't accessible enough and the demographic isn't large enough to cover the costs of AAA development. Jill cries, and goes back to work the next day on her run of the mill no-risk franchised console game like all the other game dev people who have awesome ideas but can't do them. :( Every so often something fucky happens and a AAA game comes around which takes risks and does new and exciting things. The souls games are an utterly brilliant example of this. Razor focused on the hardcore gamer demographic, they are punishing and relentless - and utterly captivating. The STALKER series is another great example. I'm sure there are many others but my brain is shit right now. Really, I think people are looking in the wrong places for real innovation if you are staring at the AAA bubble and ignoring the indie scene. /ramble /rant "Is it that hard to put in an FOV slider? That's not a snide remark, maybe it really is that hard, I don't know."
I hate hate hate tiny fixed FOV, but the honest answer to that is "yes"... or at least harder than it used to be, given the fancuer nature of game's presentation these dats. Reminds me of http://www.gearboxsoftware.com/community/articles/1061/inside-the-box-field-of-view ...those damned apples!
also, i think FOV is more complex than just affecting the camera. I've played some games where messing with the field of view introduced bugs. in some games, the bugs could be ignored (eg: gun model didn't have any polys at the back), but in others, they would make the game unpleasant to play (not quite unplayable, but unfun at least; eg: clicks don't line up, text on screen doesn't appear...). It is an art & performance problem, not just a player choice issue.
How many times have you seen a videogame where when you increase the fov using a hack or ini tweak the characters arms stop before they leave the screen, or other npc's don't interact with the player view properly, or the players hands don't reach the correct location when you use something. Etc etc. FOV is a right pita! The performance thing is fairly obvious I should think. You can see more = the engine has to draw more = the engine gets slower at drawing things. Then there is UI to consider. If the game uses in world ui drawn to an in-game model/plane (there is a fancy word for this that I've forgotten) then when you increase fov you can possibly make the entire ui unreadable or too far away. Nothing in game dev is simple. That "one simple tweak" doesn't fucking exist. You increase the fov by 5 and suddenly the game runs at 10fps, characters shoot around at 900mph and your gun starts shooting body parts instead of bullets. Trust me, I checked! Good read, I think I've actually read that post before. The narrow FOV in Borderlands is actually what prevented me from playing it. It came to me highly recommended, but I just couldn't push past the FOV induced headache.
And, as I suspected, implementing a custom FOV has its own set of challenges. Yeah, imagine you're the artist whose level gets bounced because it hits an unacceptable frame drop in a couple of areas - but only when you have it on the highest FOV setting (that no-one but the Shamblers of this world are going to be playing with).
Multiply those sorts of situations by a thousand and you realise why devs prefer to have things like FOV fixed at a constant value. Multiply those sorts of situations by a thousand and you realise why devs prefer to have things like FOV fixed at a constant value.
Maybe taking a page out of CS:GO's book would be a reasonable solution. That is, have two FOV settings: narrow for people sitting on there couch and standard for people wanting to play at their desk without vomiting. Devs get constant FOV value(s) and the players get at least some option. that no-one but the Shamblers of this world are going to be playing with
i find with these new wide screens, fov of about 100-105 is comfortable (and looks like old school 90 on 4:3s). Developpers who are afraid their game would be uninteresting, so they clutter it with everything that would make the game "complex" on paper, whle it's the perfect way to make a mess of a game, much like what we see in AAA games today:
You can have an actual dev team whose publisher would let them do whatever they want, but because of the scale of the public or "fear" the game would be uninteresting, they think too "complexily" and thus the final game becomes a mess. The key thing then would be to have a free spirit, be down to earth, and focus on prioritizing as well as knowing what makes a good game in general ever since video games were a thing. A perfect example of this is Square Enix: after the 2000s their FF games became a mess of too complex game designs and stories, and now people are more fond of Bravery Default than the recent FF games. John Carmack said it himself anyway: complexity comes from the eyes of the player. Good game design does simple designs that naturally expands while still being simple, because the utter basis of the game, if done right, allows said simple design to expand, thus creating the illusion that it's "complex". In fact, there's a recent video that talks about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxRxh8Ka5H8 Finally, I'd like to speculate Bioshcok Infinite went from this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGXZ2VKRpwk to the final product we all know and love (lol) because Ken Levine got a panic attack during development because he doubted his game's quality, while he should've calmed down and continues on the path he set himself on. And we all know game development is quite a stressful situation to be in. Maybe it's not always as easy to implement adjustable FOV (and similar things we 'take for granted'), but it's one of the main reasons games are perceived as being dumbed down in functionality and accessiblity compared to older games - regardless whether it's fact or just biased perception.
For example, playing Fallout 4 right now, I can confidently say that the restricted FOV (and awkward/unreliable way of trying to change it) is hampering my immersion considerably, almost to the point where it makes me dizzy. And that is despite the fact that the game already has a higher default setting than several others FPS games. Is it the developers' "artistic vision" that the game should be played like this.... or is it just some bullshit tradeoff that has sadly become accepted over the years? Hell, I'd take a stretched, cut-off or distorted HUD any day if I could have a proper field of view in games like this, individually adjustable to user preference and system specs. Incidientally, I also believe that, among a few other things, the restriction to low FOV settings is responsible for the decline in navigation skill of many players, and subsequently the need for constant handholding. How are you supposed to find your way around if you can only see a small fraction of the scene.... but at least more explosions and particles at a constant frame rate!!!
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